The Southern Baptists have politics. There are liberal and conservative Baptists, just as there are liberal and conservative Jews, Catholics and Mormons.

Robert Novak observes that Mike Huckabee isn't just liberal on taxes, but liberal on Jesus too, and that its a mistake to assume the Evangelicals will line up behind him.

When Mike Huckabee went to Houston on Tuesday to raise funds for his fast-rising, money-starved presidential candidacy, a luncheon for the ordained Baptist minister was arranged by evangelical Christians. On hand was Judge Paul Pressler, a hero to Southern Baptist Convention reformers. But he was a nonpaying guest who supports Fred Thompson for president.

There has been a tendancy in the media and by some bloggers to characterize social conservatives as single issue voters, separate and distinct from security and fiscal conservatives. John Hawkins Huckenfreude post

All year long, when Rudy Giuliani was looking like the strongest candidate, despite the fact that he was completely blowing off social conservatives, we kept hearing that social conservatives should suck it up and vote for him anyway.

That's all well and good. In fact, it's exactly the same thing that I said.

However, then when Mike Huckabee started producing burly enough poll numbers to put the shoe on the other foot, a lot of the same people who were telling social conservatives to suck it up started freaking out. Oh, he's so religious! He doesn't buy into evolution! He's a former preacher! I'd rather vote for a Democrat than Huckabee!

This is entirely misleading. While there are single issue conservatives, they are vanishingly small minorities. I live in arguable the most Republican county in the most Republican state in the country (and I love it...), but I've never talked to anyone who came remotely close to being one of these mythical single issue voters--fiscal, social or security.

What we have instead of people with varying intensity on the range of conservative issues.

As demonstrated by his Christmas Greeting, the floating cross and the subsequent denial that he was doing anything "political" with the now infamous commercial, Huckabee thinks his co-religionists are morons.

I suspect he'll soon discover that they are far more sophisticated and smarter than he gives them credit for.