Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008, is a Mormon. Did you know that?
Lots of people are spending lots of time lately to make sure you do. Much of it is lowest-common-denominator fear mongering, borne of opportunism and the ease of manipulating the ignorant. Candidate Mike Huckabee’s babbling about whether Mormons think Jesus and Lucifer are brothers, for example.
I’ve only paid sporadic attention, mostly because I’m unable to conceive of a plausible scenario in which a candidate’s religion would have anything whatsoever to do with securing my vote. I did happen upon a lovely nugget in The Corner this morning, though, from a contributor named Mike Potemra:
Thanks to all the readers who passed along their kind words in response to my post about Mormons. To the readers, on the other hand, who have written me about how I should be worried about the (in the words of one) “extremely strange” and “Scientology-level strange” beliefs of Mormons, here’s my response: In my own faith, we believe that the cause of all evil was a single mistake by human beings many millennia ago—but that the situation was set right . . . because we murdered an innocent man 2,000 years ago. Therefore: I’m not about to throw stones about beliefs that sound weird to people who don’t share them.
You might also like:
- Mitt Romney is in a cult!
I have reservations about Mitt Romney because he’s demonstrably supportive of government-run medicin… - Mitt Romney out for ’16; what’s it mean to the “establishment”?
Mitt Romney said on a conference call this morning that he would not run for president next year. Ro… - Republicans, October 2011
Y’all have been hitting an older debate post today, so let me scramble a few thoughts. I want to thi… - Rick Santorum’s moment
All right, I guess the primary season has started in earnest. Guess I better write about it. (When n… - Super Tuesday arrives
Well, here we are. You’ve only thought it’s been election season so far. Hammer down today. Defeatin…
“Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008, is a Mormon. Did you know that?”
Does anyone NOT know that?! That may well be the only thing I know for sure about the guy. I am, yet again, so fed up with American politics that I would consider defecting to someplace a little less stupid, but I can’t think of any place that’s better, really – ALL politics is messed up. I CAN tell you that I’ve taken to letting my machine answer my phone. No lie: it rang about 15 times yesterday, and only ONCE was there a person I know on the other end. I got calls from Obama, Clinton, Guliani, and about a dozen “public interest” groups, and almost all of those were computer generated. I HATE living in a “first in the nation” state.
Mitt scares me on a level that I can’t quite voice. I guess since I was raised an umpteenth generation Mormon and still have very active Mormon family members, I understand the gut-clenching pull that church has and will have on him.
Then again, having Mitt as President doesn’t scare me as much as some of the others. The devil you know, right? But until the Republicans get off their “gays are evil low-lifes who deserve discrimination” platform, I cannot vote for any of ’em. Not that the Dems are much better on that issue. Ugh.