The Religious Reich

Here's a scary quote I read in Liz Clarke's profile of Mike Huckabee in the Washington Post this morning:

"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer," [Huckabee] told a group of pastors on the eve of the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention. "I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives." He concluded that speech with words he says he'd phrase differently today: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

I don't know which scares me more: that an American in 1998, with even a passing acquaintance with the First Amendment, could think that this is an appropriate agenda for an aspiring President, or that millions of people would vote for him based on this single criterion. And I realize he says he'd phrase it differently now, but I don't see how different phrasing would change the idea.