Romney and The Mormon Thing Again

I am sorry to say that my prediction of Mitt Romney having an uphill road to the White House due to his religious faith seems to be coming true. The Super Tuesday results tell the tale. Romney did not do as well as he likely needed to. McCain or Huckabee got what they needed or did better than expected. You can argue that it is Mitt’s seemingly late arrival to conservative positions that worries people, or that he seems plastic, too perfect, too rich for people to warm up to, or that he is too negative in his campaigning, as Michael Medved would say, that makes him unattractive to voters. However, I think that all of the above are good excuses—perhaps not good, but convenient—to rationalize not voting for the guy who is the most successful financial genius to ever run for the office of President of the United States and who holds more of the traditional conservative positions than any of the current Republican candidates. I am afraid the truth is that there is just enough religious bigotry in the Republican Party to keep the man, who I think is the most qualified, from being President.

I do not think you can use Romney’s “late change” to conservatism as an argument against him when McCain is taking positions on the recent tax cuts that he did not have when he voted against them a few years ago. His excuse for voting against the tax cuts has changed since his vote—he originally stated that it favored the rich too much, which is a liberal argument, if I ever heard one. Now he jumps through hoops to explain that it was only because he wanted it to be tied to budget cuts that he opposed them. Tough budget cuts would have been great, but his statements clearly show that he is not a believer in, or does not understand, Reagan’s supply side economics. And as for negative campaigning, McCain has been much nastier—and I must say more removed from the truth—in his attacks on Romney. Much to their chagrin, Romney has, in my opinion, accurately pointed out the other guys’ positions and their shortcomings in comparison to his strengths. Clearly, people can make bad choices because of misinformation or because they have not seriously investigated before making a decision, but this seems to me to be a huge disconnect.

There seems to be a lot of animus towards Romney from his opponents, as is demonstrated by the West Virginia convention votes where Romney won the first round and the McCain campaign admonished their West Virginia supporters to switch their vote to Huckabee to prevent a Romney win. It appears to me that that the fix may be in—Huckabee will help McCain to eliminate Romney and secure the VP position on the Republican ticket. I am sure there is an element of jealousy by his opponents because of Mitts all-around success and looks, etc. and, he is very straight forward in his criticism—as Glenn Beck says, "he does not play the game”—but, it seems that there has to be more to it than that. I think it is that and his religious faith.

There is no doubt in my mind that Huckabee is bigoted against Mormons. His comment in an interview about Romney’s faith being Christian, “I don’t know, don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers?”, was to me a dead give away. My experience, as a Baptist convert to Mormonism, with Baptist opposition to my faith and their tactics, including the Jesus and Satan being brothers-charade, leave me no other choice. McCain is also a Baptist, as I understand it, so it is possible, if not likely, that he has some anti-Mormon sentiment. However, McCain generally gets angry and vindictive towards criticism of any kind, so it may just be that he hates Romney because Mitt dared criticize him.

Clearly, I do not believe that all Baptists or other evangelicals will not vote for a Mormon. Many obviously have. It is just difficult for me to see that someone with Romney’s qualifications and positions, which are more in line with conservative thought, should be rejected by so much of the Republican electorate. I have to conclude that Romney’s faith is still a major reason.

Having said that, it occurs to me that Romney’s political stock will grow in four years, if, he can do as Reagan did and become a spokesman for the conservative point of view and hone an effective image and message. It is likely that conditions will be such, especially if the democrats take the White House, or if McCain wins and reneges on his promises to defend conservative principles, that people will turn to a conservative savior. I do not doubt that liberal governance will send us in to serious economic difficulties and expose us to more terrorism. So, there may be a silver lining. We can only hope.

I just learned from the radio that Mitt has dropped out. It is sad for me and many others that saw him as a great leader at this important time in history. I read his speech--it was a great one, and very well received by the crowd in attendance--and I am convinced, as I stated above, that his stock will be much better in 4 years. If he follows Reagan's example and becomes the spokesman for conservative ideals, he will be hard to be denied in 4 to 8 years.