Jesus was too smart to run for politics– that was Mike Huckabee’s great line during the Wednesday night debate.

Too bad politicians aren’t smart enough to quit playing Jesus…

I’m listening to Chris Matthews and Huckabee this evening around 5, on MSNBC, mangling theology.

Matthews at least has an excuse. What’s Huckabee’s? He used to be an evangelical pastor.

Was Jesus all-sweetness and light and forgiveness?

Huckabee kept quoting the line “In as much as you do this unto the least of my brethren, you do it unto me.”

No quarrel with that. But is a government program the proper definition of”doing unto the least”?

Who is the least? Is poverty the definition of being least?

Remember, this is the Jesus who also said this:

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

The law Jesus refers to here is the law of the old testament, which is based on justice and the concept of “deserving.”

This is in no way different from similar notions in the major religions, like the Hindu ideal of alms-giving, which is required to be directed toward the deserving if it is to be called dharmic (i.e., lawful, dutiful).

Now, in monetary terms, it’s true that what welfare expends is a mere drop next to the oceans that go to subsidize defense contractors, the space program, and Wall Street.

But the smallness of an error in physical terms doesn’t change its magnitude in terms of meaning.

We see the gospel through the eyes of socialism and then wonder at the results we get. Oddly, the same people who are dismayed by references to Biblical teaching when the subject is gender or reproductive rights are just fine with references to Jesus when the subject is taxes and welfare.

In other words, the gospel is used as nothing more than an imprimatur on whatever it is any constituency wishes for itself.

This was transparently clear from the quality of questions asked last night. Personally, I wouldn’t have entertained that level of argument in an undergraduate seminar, let alone a presidential debate.

But, none of the questioners themselves (or the moderators who allowed them) seemed to care that their questioning betrayed an attitude toward citizenship that was grasping, venal and self-centered in the extreme.

What’s in it for me was the sum of their inquiries. And with a couple of honorable exceptions, to a man, the Republicans were only too willing to be — or seem to be — all things to all people.

A chicken in every pot, and if we’re to believe Huckabee, a man on every planet. Fortunately, Duncan Hunter brought him back into orbit.

Ron Paul, like Hunter, seemed to be the only one aware that the only space we should be thinking about now is the big hollow space at the center of the US economy.

A lot of puffed up goo on the outside and nothing inside.

Like a dough-nut. Or more accurately, a no-more- dough-nut.

Charles Krauthammer on FOX News at 6 was clearly displaying an anti-Southern animus when he found nothing appealing about Huckabee. He would have been right on target if he’d found nothing conservative about the witty governor.