Mike Huckabee at CPAC: America must “repent” before it receives god’s “fiery judgment”

The former presidential candidate fears America has forgotten its spiritual and historical “midwife”

Published March 7, 2014 4:20PM (EST)

  (Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com)
(Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com)

Mike Huckabee’s Friday morning speech at CPAC wasn’t so much a speech as a recitation of bumper sticker-size conservative slogans and Fox News inspired zingers.

But before he started mailing in quips about Benghazi and condemnations of the “criminal” IRS, the former Southern Baptist minister made sure to warn America of the Sodom and Gomorrah it could one day become.

“I know there’s a god, and I know this nation would not exist without him as the midwife of its birth,” Huckabee told the near-capacity crowd of conservative activists. “And I know that if this nation forgets god, god will have every right to forget us.”

After sharing a joke about how god should “apologize” to Sodom and Gomorrah if he decides not to strike down America for its wickedness, Huckabee spoke of his “hope” that the U.S. would “repent before we ever have to receive his fiery judgment.”

In Huckabee’s telling, a god who destroyed America would be doing nothing more than dismantling something he himself had once built. “There is no other way to explain [American] history,” Huckabee said, referring to god’s guiding hand.

The former presidential candidate and Fox News host didn’t go into much detail as to what America had done to deserve divine punishment, but he did proclaim that he knew “life begins at conception” and that “a society that sacrifices its own children is no better than the ancient philistines.”

Yet Huckabee left the door open for another, more man-made form of righteousness to take hold in the unlikely event that god himself doesn’t step in: “I know the Second Amendment,” Huckabee said, “is the only last resort we have in this country to protect all the other freedoms we enjoy.”


By Elias Isquith

Elias Isquith is a former Salon staff writer.

MORE FROM Elias Isquith


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Cpac 2014 Fox News Irs Scandal Mike Huckabee Religious Right Second Amendment Sodom And Gomorra