Are anti-Mormons to blame for Romney's failure?

[_DonBradley]

Dartagnan...

Wow.

I had an experience that made me think of posting along these lines.

Late night on Super Tuesday I turned in to KSL and heard--to my surprise--a radio talk show commentator lamenting that after all the support the Latter-day Saints had given the Republicans over the years, the Republicans had betrayed them because of anti-Mormon bias. He said how angering and disheartening it was to see the other Republican candidates shaking hands after a debate while Romney stood off on the side by himself. There was no mention of the fact that Romney had run attack ads against all the other candidates, burning every bridge he could. Everything was attributed to anti-Mormon bias.

I wanted to write to point out that the same people who were upset that others had allowed religion to determine their vote against Romney had themselves allowed religion to determine their vote for him. (Or is the obscenely one-sided 90% Utah vote for the Mormon candidate supposed to be a coincidence?)

But my rather minor thoughts are dwarfed by the clear, well-documented reflection you present above.

Hats off,

Don

[_DonBradley]

Mike Huckabee is a bigot. His campaign employed anti-Catholic rhetoric against Brownback, and he personally used anti-Mormon rhetoric (often somewhat subtle, but at least once blatant) to motivate the large numbers of conservative Christians who have been taught that Mormons are not Christians and who were uncomfortable about putting a non-Christian (by their definition) in the Oval Office. In my opinion, had Mike Huckabee not been in the race, it may have been quite close between Romney and McCain. McCain and Huckabee cooperated to knock Romney out. Huckabee may be many things, but he is not a fool, and I am sure he knows he didn't and doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell to get the nomination. We should also remember that Mike Huckabee spoke (keynote, I think) at an SBC conference in 1998 in SLC, where the specific goal was to spread anti-Mormon information among participants, and proselyte Mormons in Utah. The man was not ignorant of anti-Mormonism. He is well-versed in it. His language in that regard was always deliberate. I hold him to be, basically, a scum bucket. And since I am not a Christian, I do hope a storm trashed his house, although I hope no one dear to him was there to get hurt.

Having said that, Mitt ran a poor campaign. The reason he had a chance at the nomination in the first place is that McCain has spent a decade thumbing his nose at conservatives. The only reason to choose McCain over Romney, if you are a conservative, was his better shot at winning the election against either Hillary or Obama. I quit liking John McCain at all when he started to pander to conservative Christians. I guess we see where that ended up. He and Huckabee in bed together. I just hope that Huckabee gets left at the altar, and McCain loses the general election.

Hey Trevor,

I wasn't aware how clearly in the anti-Mormon camp Huckabee was. But, having said that, I very much doubt that Huckabee stayed in the race in order to thwart Mitt Romney and hand the nomination to McCain. While such a quasi-conspiratorial scenario is possible, it is, like most such scenarios, unlikely.

As for the candidates...

I've given my reasons for reluctance about Romney. I actually rather liked him earlier in his career--a Mormon as a moderate-to-liberal Republican is, in my book, fairly cool. But more recently I've been unable to tell whether his past moderacy was the genuine article or merely a pose, and I decidedly disliked his pandering to the strident conservatives.

Huckabee...I didn't hear his anti-Catholic or anti-Mormon comments. Such bigotry is disheartening.

What I did see of Huckabee was a surprisingly sincere and caring person with policies that didn't always toe the conservative line and that seem to aimed at helping real, ordinary people. Huckabee comes across as a conservative populist. After seven years of the Bush plutocracy, it's a wake up call to see that such an animal is even possible.

McCain. While you've blasted McCain for pandering to the right, you don't seem to have done the same with Romney, who did so far more obsequiously (hence his endorsement by Fox News and the like). McCain has a long enough track record of unpopular but principled stances in the Senate that one actually knows where he stands--as the staunch conservatives obviously do. I didn't like his hawkishness in taking us into Iraq, and don't like a number of other policy stands he takes. But I would credit him with taking a moderate-realist stance on a number of important issues, such as global warming. And he has for some years been one of the only politicians who seems credible and serious on the issue of deep-cutting campaign finance reform.

This doesn't mean I'll vote for him. I've yet to see how the tickets will line up, etc., etc. I also rather like Obama, and voted for him in the Utah primary.

My thoughts...

For now!

Don

[_CaliforniaKid]

Personally, I would vote for Romney long before I'd vote for Huckabee. Something about a bigoted creationist in the White House frightens me.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

While I can understand why persecution ridden Mormons would see sympathy from outside journalists as something appealing, they keep ignoring the elephant in the room that undermines the point they're trying to make. If Evangelicals are bigots for not voting for a Mormon, then Mormons are also bigots for refusing to vote for an Evangelical minister.

Try, just try some intellectua substance for once Dartagnon. Its not really all that painful or difficult.

"Persecution ridden" Mormons? You see, you can get away with that kind of anti-Mormon moonbattery at a place like this because there are, indeed, so many here who, in point of fact, have very little knowledge of internal LDS culture. Among a message board populated with a more substantial company of active LDS, this torpedo would have turned right around and broadsided you.

Your comparison between the Huckster and Romney is, of course, apples and oranges. Romney is essentially, despite some things he has said and positions he has ostensively taken in the past, a conservative. Huckabee is in all essentials, except for perhaps two core issues, a liberal.

This means that a critical mass of conservative EVs, lacking now Thompson or any other viable conservative candidate from their own theological background, chose a statist liberal of their own religious persuasion over a conservative outside their religious in-group.

What they will have given themselves, in all likelihood in November, is Hillary or Obama, two nanny state socialists who's entire world views are in conflict with those of most EV voters.

So was this a rational reaction to Romney and the Church?

[_moksha]

Is there any reason to think Romney would not have won the southern states if he was not a Mormon?

[_Coggins7]

I've given my reasons for reluctance about Romney. I actually rather liked him earlier in his career--a Mormon as a moderate-to-liberal Republican is, in my book, fairly cool.

Unfortunately, this type of Republican tends to make poor policy choices and, more often than not, leave the Constitution in the background as an afterthought, just as the liberal Democrats do. We've had one of these in the White House now for eight years, and his presence there has almost unraveled the party as to morale and a general flight from principle within the institutional Party itself. Another, McCain, threatens to detach the classical liberal (conservative) base of the party from it completely for the foreseeable future.

The idea is to see a conservative with no liberal leanings whatever, a classical liberal with traditional conservative social views and conservative to libertarian economic views, come to the for in the Party. The Republican Party is, unfortunately, rudderless and leaderless at the present time. If the party becomes little more than the Democratic Party Light, it will have ceased as a principled bastion against the encroaching socialism of the Democratic Party faithful.

[_DonBradley]

Glad to see we have an old-time Cold War conservative on board, C7. Welcome to the 21st Century.

[_Coggins7]

Glad to see we have an old-time Cold War conservative on board, C7. Welcome to the 21st Century.

In other words, as the song goes "don't know much about history..."

[_harmony]

Glad to see we have an old-time Cold War conservative on board, C7. Welcome to the 21st Century.

Where Loran lives, the dawn of the 21st Century has yet to occur. The shadow of the hill tends to create a strange wrinkle in time.

[_Coggins7]

Glad to see we have an old-time Cold War conservative on board, C7. Welcome to the 21st Century.

Where Loran lives, the dawn of the 21st Century has yet to occur. The shadow of the hill tends to create a strange wrinkle in time.

"Don't know much about..."