Despite his national speech in Texas concerning religion and government, Mitt Romney has a problem. It’s not a new problem, but it is one that will prevent him from becoming President. The reason it will prevent him from getting the Republican nomination is not because of his religion, but because of how he has cast his campaign around his religion. If Mr. Romney had run on leadership and business experience he could have avoided the whole Mormon issue, instead he has pandered to the Right on religious values thus bringing his religion to the forefront. By doing so he caused the same voters he was pandering to, to begin questioning his religion. And from the poll numbers and the rise of Mike Huckabee they didn’t like what they saw.
“Evangelicals like to find someone who shares their faith and their values. Usually you find one or the other; in Huckabee you find both,” explained the Rev. Hal Lane, the pastor of West Side Baptist Church in Greenwood.
Romney knows he has a problem making himself acceptable to voters in a state where about 725,000 people are Baptists, like Burdette. That’s a big reason that the candidate made a highly publicized speech Dec. 6 in Texas to explain the relationship of his faith to his values and politics. McClatchy News
Unfortunately for Mr. Romney many of the religious right voters he courted, despite their protestations to the contrary, are bigots. They don’t understand Mormonism and you didn’t explain it to them when you had a chance, now you are seeing the true nature of your conservative brethren. They are not going to vote for you. The thing about America is that the polls are inaccurate. The reason they are inaccurate is because very few people will actually say what they truly believe, usually they say what they think they are suppose to say. It is only when they are alone or around like minded individuals do they feel comfortable enough to tell the truth.
The truth is simply this; many of your religious conservative friends do not believe that Mormons are Christians. When Mr. Huckabee “innocently” asked about Jesus and the devil being brothers he knew exactly what he was doing and his rise bears that out. The fiscal conservatives don’t care what religion you are because their religion is money, but those down home true believers are the ones who are flocking to Huckabee by the boat loads. It is a dangerous game when you mix politics and religion, especially if your religion isn’t their religion.
The sad part about it all is that no one wants to deal with this issue truthfully, because if they do then they will expose the religious right for what they really are. Why do you think Pat Robertson endorsed an adulterer and pro-choice liberal from New York? You, Mr. Romney are not their kind of people. These people sad to say are intolerant of not only blacks, Latinos, and poor people; they are also intolerant of those who do not share their exact beliefs. The Evangelical movement in America has done more to promote disunity of the Church than any other movement in the history of the Church. Because of their narrowly defined views and belief that they possess the only “real truth” from God, they have alienated more than they have united.
The reason Mitt Romney’s speech failed is because he failed the litmus test. He failed the test by not taking it. The voters he hoped to assuage with his speech were waiting for him to explain Mormonism to them and to let them know that he was one of them, he didn’t do that. Instead he tried to play bait and switch, while he claimed that religion was not relevant to the political arena, he let those people know at the same time he still believed as they did.
But he did so, unfortunately, in a typically Romney-like way, with a corrupt little wink-and-nod to his evangelical inquisitors–oh, but don’t worry, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind,” etc.; just don’t ask me about Mormon underwear. It is corrupt not because it is untrue, but because it aims to let him eat his cake and have it, too. He rejected demands to explain his faith, but did so while letting his interlocutors know that he was really one of them. Too clever by half, in the end, because they will not actually believe him, but this is what comes of positions of moral conviction devised by management consultants. Weekly Standard
The truth is that we are a nation of hypocrites. We espoused our belief in separation of Church and State but by our very process of electing leaders we violate those beliefs. These are supposed to be two Christians and you see the intolerance, imagine if one were a Muslim or Hindu? I however do not feel sorry for either, they both have used their religions to pander to the forces of intolerance and bigotry and everyone knows what happens if you play with fire. The Republicans are now scrambling to derail Mike Huckabee’s momentum, but they were the ones who opened the door for him to run through by their years of courting religious fanatics and bigots. I for one hope that he is the nominee, they deserve each other.
False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news – Adrienne Rich