Many of his supporters were religious bigots, as it turns out. There are many evangelicals who buy into anti-Mormon propaganda. (Other evangelicals supported Romney) But if Huckabee planned it, it was the stupidest political move he could have made, nothing slick and devious like people portray it—I mean it would have hurt him in NH—and by all appearances he couldn’t have planned it, because he refused and refused to raise anything about Mormons during that interview but he reporter kept on encouraging it.

My belief about what happened, is that Huckabee growing up among anti-Mormonism, has heard that said about Mormons, which is why he knew the question, and he only asked, when  (if you read about the interview) the reporter claimed to be an expert on Mormonism and invited a question about it. Prior to that, he refused to make a comment on Mormonism. That is to me the only plausible explanation of what happened.

If there were questions around an anti-Mormon convention he attended, thats what should have been brought up, not his discussion with the reporter. From the very few things I’ve heard about that, Huckabee didn’t say anything anti-Mormon in that speech either.

Furthermore, Huckabee not only has resisted saying anything about Mormons, but he’s even praised atheists who "stand on their principles"

When I said grow up, I was more broadly talking about all the political nonsense in total that is happening about this cycle, I didn’t mean it as a personal comment, so i hope no hard feelings are involved.

Personally I think people should resist making conclusions about candidates based

There is no question in my mind that the question to the reporter was intentional and planned. Huckabee was trying to position himself as the "Christian" (stated specifically many times in campaign literature contrasting him to Romney) alternative to the (presumably) "non-Christian" Romney. I’ve spent almost 20 years studying anti-Mormon literature. I don’t believe for a second that all the EXACT SAME coded references about “magic underwear”, “Jesus and Satan are brothers” and other standard anti-Mormon memes just happened to crop up from the Huckabee campaign and supporters nor do I believe that people who were clearly well-educated about every detail of their primary political rival just happened to be honestly unaware of longstanding slurs about his religion and just happened to trip over them unintentionally.

Yes, Huckabee as well as many of his supporters were and are religious bigots, in my opinion. Unlike you, redfish, I will not make personal attacks on those who disagree with me on this point. But I stand behind my charge because the alternative explanations for their anti-Mormon behaviors are implausible.

I mean you can believe whatever you want to about it, but there’s a lot of BS floating around this election cycle about all the candidates. McCain is not a liberal, Huckabee is not a bigot, Obama did reject Farrakhan, Clinton did not call Obama a ‘fairy tale’

I mean grow up.

And the religious right has been saying for years they want to amend the constitution. How did Huckabee change that? To them it’ s no different than wanting to change laws to end slavery or people who wanted prohibition. To them the reasons are grounded from faith. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have any other legitimate reasons for wanting the laws changed.

The far left doesn’t get that and probably never will. To them it’s keep your faith quiet and some even farther want it completely out of society to the point of forced atheism. I grew up more with that thought process than fundies. So while I do think fundies go to far, I at least sympathize.

But the net effect of Huckabee’s campaign, with its willful inclusion of religious prejudice and its openness about claiming divine mandate for both personal and partisan aggrandizement, has been to seriously undermine my personal sympathy for the so-called religious right. Alas, much of what the far left said about the so-called “religious right” wanting to amend the Constitution and impose other tests (e.g. “no Mormons need apply”) to impose a fundamentalist vision of religious purity turned out to be true, at least as far as the Huckabee campaign was concerned.

By giving loud voice to some of the most intolerant aspects of his movement and by sticking with it far longer than was reasonable, Mike Huckabee has done more to alienate potential allies than he could possibly know. His enthusiastic embrace of anti-Mormon bigotry was the beginning of a 21st century version of Pat Robertson’s 1991 campaign. Hopefully, Huckabee’s smiling-face-shiv-in-the-back campaign will fade into oblivion.

If McCain is foolish enough to put him on the ticket, I don’t see how I could ever vote for it. Such a move might solidify McCain’s status among a segment of religious conservatives, but it would alienate one of Republicans’ most loyal constituencies (Mormons) and seriously undermine McCain’s natural base of support among moderates.