Mike Huckabee responded in a Newsmax interview today to new Pew findings showing that “a growing share of the American public wants religion to play a role in U.S. politics,” saying that the poll results “give me a great sense of comfort that America is coming to understand that it cannot explain its history apart from an understanding of the providence of God.”

Huckabee went on to explain how these poll results are very encouraging because all tax and spending issues stem back to a lack of “character and integrity” among the citizenry.

“I know this from being a governor ten and a half years, J.D.,” he told host J.D. Hayworth. “I looked at how many things in our budget were directly related to the fact that character and integrity had broken down in people. And I guarantee you that if you look through a state and federal budget, that a lot of the expenses that we have and therefore the taxes that we cough up to pay for it is because we have, really, a population that fails to connect integrity on a personal level and government on a broad and national level.”

He gave the example of a school dropout who goes on a drug-use and graffiti spree. “Well-behaved kids just don’t cost as much. Well-behaved adults don’t cost as much. It’s really very simple if you look at it. “