Obama Campaign Won't Attack Romney's Mormonism

Hardly necessary I would have thought, and afterall, one shouldn't mock the afflicted.

An interesting enough article from Jon Ward at HuffPo, highlighting the inextricable link between religion and Yanky politics. I might have passed it over as just another article of the genre, but there are some interesting links leading off, Dowd and Hitchens but to name two.

One link that isn't direct however is the one leading to: The Mormon/Jewish Controversy: What Really Happened. Quite lengthy I admit, but if you only breeze through it, it goes some way to exposing another bizarre practice of the Mormon cult. Not least the amount of effort that must have gone in to something that any sane person might reduce to basics and ask the question, 'why?'

It also, though far from its intention, makes me as a European reflect on how many miles of column inches will be printed about candidates religion before this circus comes to a close twelve months hence. Particularly given that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States, and again as a European, the column inches that one might come across relating to the religions beliefs of European pols that find themselves in similar circumstances, would I think be, zero, a big fat nothing.

And of course there are always going to be some lighter moments, though again not intentional, when the crazies, no matter what stripe, explain some of tenets of there chosen brand of delusion.

From the Maureen Dowd article.

Kent Jackson, the associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University:

As for the special garment that Mitt wears, “we wouldn’t say ‘magic underwear,’ ” Bushman explains.

It is meant to denote “moral protection,” a sign that they are “a consecrated people like the priests of ancient Israel.”

And it’s not only a one-piece any more. “There’s a two-piece now,” he said.

Well that's alright then.

Romney's Mormonism To Be A Bigger Issue In The General Election, Say Evangelicals

WASHINGTON -- The loudest objections to Mitt Romney's Mormonism have not yet been raised, according to evangelical leaders and conservatives.

One month ago, an attack on Romney's faith by a Texas pastor supporting Texas Gov. Rick Perry renewed talk that Romney, who was a high-ranking official in the Mormon church from 1981 to 1994, would lose large chunks of the evangelical vote because of his faith.

That may prove true in Iowa, the first state in the Republican presidential primary process. And Romney's faith does give many protestants pause. But polls, and evangelical leaders, tell another story: If the former Massachusetts governor is the Republican nominee, his faith may be attacked and questioned more aggressively by liberals in the general election than it has been by conservatives in the primary.

"I assume that given the early signs of what an Obama campaign is going to look like, with this class warfare stuff, that every tactic imaginable will be used by the Obama campaign, including attacking the religion of his opponent," said Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a long time leader in the social conservative movement.

Other prominent evangelical leaders told The Huffington Post that they believe Romney will be ambushed by the press.

"The major networks are heavily invested in Barack Obama's reelection," said Richard Land, a leader with the Southern Baptist Convention who heads its ethics and religious liberty commission.

"And they're all going to run detailed specials, now that we have the first Mormon nominee for president: 'What does the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints believe?' And they're going to go into all the beliefs of Mormonism, hoping to scare the 40 percent of independents who make up the decisive vote in the electorate to not vote for someone who believes such things." more

Extra: Top Romney Adviser Tied to Militia That Massacred. Mother Jones That's massacred period, not massacred Mother Jones.

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Mitt Romney's Mormonism: Pastors Say Mormons Not Christians, But Defend His Right To Be Batshit Crazy Updated

Now with Bill Maher Robert Jeffress Interview: Mormonism is a Cult.

Shurely Shome Mishtake?



And don't think this fellow is any less batshit than the Mormons.





Not too much of a shocker is it? Not in a country where Catholics are barely Christian and Italians are barely white it's not.

''WE defend anybody's right to be batshit, because we're all fucking batshit.''

Mitt Romney's Mormonism: Pastors Say Mormons Not Christians, But Defend Candidate Against Attacks
by Jaweed Kaleem

The debate over whether a largely Protestant nation is uneasy with a potential Mormon president was reignited this week after back-to-back attacks on Republican front-runner Mitt Romney's Mormonism at the high-profile Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C.

After prominent Texas megachurch pastor Rev. Robert Jeffress told audiences on Friday that Mormonism is a "cult" (shurely some mishtake?) and conservative Christian activist Bryan Fischer took the stage the next day to echo similar views, a new survey released Saturday afternoon says that three out of four pastors agree, at the least, that Mormons are not Christians.

As part of a larger survey conducted by Nashville-based Lifeway Research a year ago, 1,000 pastors were polled from around the country who represented dozens of denominations. Results, originally scheduled to be released in the coming weeks, were put out early after reporters requested data because of attacks on Romney at the summit, said Ed Stetzer, president of the Southern Baptist-affiliated organization.

"The view that Mormons are not Christians is the widely and strongly held view among Protestant pastors. That does not mean they do not respect Mormons as persons, share their values on family and have much in common. Yet, they simply view Mormonism as a distinct religion outside of basic teachings of Christianity. Many of these pastors may know Mormons who consider themselves Christians, but Protestant pastors overwhelmingly do not consider them such," said Stetzer. "I know this is an unpleasant question to many, and one that some will use as a hammer on evangelicals."

Mormons differ from most Protestants in how they view the Trinity. They also have scripture in addition to the Bible, such as the Book of Mormon, and believe in prophets such as Joseph Smith, Jr., who founded the Latter Day Saint movement.

While the Lifeway survey indicates that a majority of pastors may not support the Mormon religion, surveys on whether Americans would support a Mormon candidate are more mixed. A Pew Research Center survey from the summer said that one in four voters would be less likely to vote for a Mormon candidate and found that 34 percent of white evangelical Protestants held this view. A Gallup poll released in June also found that almost 20 percent of Republicans and independents would not vote for a Mormon president, compared to 27 percent of Democrats who said the same.

After the weekend's controversial statements on Romney's religion, prominent pastors are also coming to his defense. On Saturday, Rev. Myke Crowder, senior pastor of the Christian Life Center in Layton, Utah, and spokesman for the National Clergy Council, released a statement condemning Jeffress, who is a Southern Baptist.

"As an evangelical, born-again, Bible-believing Christian, and a pastor with more than 25 years' experience living with and ministering among a majority Mormon population, I find the comments by Pastor Jeffress unhelpful, impolite and out of place," he said. "I've been around long enough to remember when independent Baptists wouldn't pray with Southern Baptists, when fundamentalists called Southern Baptists compromisers and liberals, when Southern Baptists wouldn't keep company with Pentecostals and when Pentecostals wouldn't keep company with Catholics. That wasn't helpful to anyone. Insulting Mitt Romney adds nothing to the conversation about who should be president. We're picking the country's chief executive, not its senior pastor." huffpo with links

Spot the subliminal message, you wimin.

Previous: Mitt Romney's America: Even More of The Same

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It's 2011 -- Why Is God Still Involved In American Politics? Speaking For God

I should have had this post out earlier in the week, but I have been in recovery. Not from too much grog, or even bad drugs, no something far more brain damaging than either of those. Mormonism! I've been reading about Mormonism, the tenets of Mormonism to be exact.

No linky for you just yet, because there is, once I've made myself a tin-foil hat, hopefully a post in the making. And if I can do justice to the thing, it should be of such incredulity, that you yourselves might have to retire to the bed chamber, quite possibly, with more than just a touch of the vapours. Of that though, another day.

Just a couple of paragraphs to get the feel, and then on to the article proper.

Things that used to be considered beyond the pale in politics, such as religious intolerance or ministers blatantly claiming they know who God supports in an election, have become normalized to the point where someone like Mitt Romney, who is odious in most respects but has never really made much of a fuss over his faith, is seeing religious tests becoming a major issue in his campaign.

Yes, just like the revival tent, going beyond the pale is just but a memory. But not so for those that speak for God; modern day Elmer Gantries! we got 'em coming out the woodwork. Ain't we Glenn? ain't we Pat?

Glenn Beck, Unhinged in Texas A read in its own right.

But it's this bit that's the cracker. Believe in the most outlandish batshit crazy stuff that you could possibly dream up and you are qualified to run for office. Believe in reality, and you haven't a snowball in hell's chance of being elected. Or if by some miracle (In the name of Noodles, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful) that you do manage to slip through the net, then beware, for "The Christians immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him." (Not)

I think ministering angels are a bit thin on the ground in North Carolina, not unlike Christians I shouldn't wonder.

Atheists already face discrimination when it comes to running for public office. A number of states ban atheists from holding public office, even though the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids religious tests for office. Of course, it’s difficult for an atheist to win enough votes to get office, so this conflict hasn’t been tested much, although one atheist city council member found himself under fire by religious bigots who wanted to use North Carolina’s ban on atheists holding office to push him out for not swearing his oath of office on the Bible.

I have embedded the short Rachel Maddow clip leading from the A number of states ban link. Perhaps it might be as well watching it first; whatever?

It's 2011 -- Why Is the Christian God Still Involved In American Politics?

The Mormon-bashing directed at Mitt Romney should concern everyone for what it reveals about the undue influence of religion in American elections.
By Amanda Marcotte
October 12, 2011

As an atheist and a liberal, it’s been tempting for me to simply laugh at Republicans fighting each other over the issue of whether or not Mitt Romney, a Mormon, gets to consider himself a Christian. From the non-believer point of view, it’s like watching a bunch of grown adults work themselves into a frenzy over the differences between leprechauns and fairies. But watching the debate unfold, I’ve become concerned about what it means to make someone’s religious beliefs such a big campaign issue, because it’s indicative of a larger eroding of the separation of church and state, which concerns not just atheists but all people who understand the importance of maintaining a secular government.

Robert Jeffress, an influential pastor who is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, went on "Focal Point" with Bryan Fischer and declared that one shouldn’t support Mitt Romney for president because Romney, a Mormon, isn’t a real Christian. This created a media dustup that was silly even by the usual standards of ever-sillier mainstream media campaign coverage. John King of CNN interviewed Jeffress, focusing strictly on the question of who Jeffress believes deserves to be called a Christian, and how firmly he believes that only people he calls Christians should hold public office. Candy Crowley of CNN dogged both Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann on the question of whether or not they believe Romney is a Christian, and then she got irate with the candidates when they refused to answer the question, claiming that it’s irrelevant.

These interviews are remarkable for what the CNN anchors didn’t discuss, which was the most important question of all: the separation of church and state. Even though our nation has a tradition of pastors staying out of partisan politics -- in fact, it is illegal for ministers to endorse candidates from the pulpit -- it seemingly never occurred to King to challenge Jeffress for overstepping his bounds by telling people that God wants an evangelical Christian who is a Republican for president. By making the story about whether or not Mormons are Christians, CNN left the viewer with the impression that only Christians deserve to hold public office, and that the only thing left to debate is whether or not someone “counts” as a Christian, making him or her eligible for office.

We’re a long way from the days when John Kennedy assured the public that he respected the separation of church and state and would keep his faith separate from his policy-making decisions. Now, even mainstream reporters take it as a given that politicians will let religion govern their actions, and the only thing left to debate on theology is how many angels any single politician believes dance on the head of a pin. Things that used to be considered beyond the pale in politics, such as religious intolerance or ministers blatantly claiming they know who God supports in an election, have become normalized to the point where someone like Mitt Romney, who is odious in most respects but has never really made much of a fuss over his faith, is seeing religious tests becoming a major issue in his campaign.

The ramifications for this shift affect more than conservative Mormons trying to win as Republicans. By not challenging the assertion that only Christians should hold office, mainstream journalists encourage bigotry against all religious minorities, including atheists. Atheists already face discrimination when it comes to running for public office. A number of states ban atheists from holding public office, even though the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids religious tests for office. Of course, it’s difficult for an atheist to win enough votes to get office, so this conflict hasn’t been tested much, although one atheist city council member found himself under fire by religious bigots who wanted to use North Carolina’s ban on atheists holding office to push him out for not swearing his oath of office on the Bible.

There’s a reason the Founding Fathers wrote a national constitution that forbade religious tests for office and required the separation of church and state. It’s not just protection against the escalating religious bigotry we're seeing lately, but also because religion should have no place in politics in the first place. Neither atheists nor believers benefit when leaders are guided more by religious dogma than by rationality. Angels and demons might be a fine thing to worry about when you’re in church on Sunday, but when you’re trying to govern real people in the real world, it’s far better to rely on evidence and empirical facts, interpreted through reason and not through the guesswork of faith. This is why Kennedy defended himself against questions about his faith by saying, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”

People like Robert Jeffress, when they propose religious tests for office--even ones held privately by voters--should face more challenges than reporters simply asking if they consider Mormons “real” Christians. They should be confronted with Kennedy’s words and asked directly why they disagree with our former president about the separation of church and state. They should be asked why they believe only a certain breed of Christians should hold office, and asked why they think it’s appropriate to demand that politicians put religious dogma before evidence-based and rational approaches to policy. Anything less than that is aiding the religious right in its mission to remake our secular democracy into a theocracy. It shouldn’t be tolerated. AlterNet

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Mitt Romney's Mormonism: Pastors Say Mormons Not Christians, But Defend His Right To Be Batshit Crazy

Updated here.

Not too much of a shocker is it? Not in a country where Catholics are barely Christian and Italians are barely white it's not.

''WE defend anybody's right to be batshit, because we're all fucking batshit.''

Mitt Romney's Mormonism: Pastors Say Mormons Not Christians, But Defend Candidate Against Attacks
by Jaweed Kaleem

The debate over whether a largely Protestant nation is uneasy with a potential Mormon president was reignited this week after back-to-back attacks on Republican front-runner Mitt Romney's Mormonism at the high-profile Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C.

After prominent Texas megachurch pastor Rev. Robert Jeffress told audiences on Friday that Mormonism is a "cult" (shurely some mishtake?) and conservative Christian activist Bryan Fischer took the stage the next day to echo similar views, a new survey released Saturday afternoon says that three out of four pastors agree, at the least, that Mormons are not Christians.

As part of a larger survey conducted by Nashville-based Lifeway Research a year ago, 1,000 pastors were polled from around the country who represented dozens of denominations. Results, originally scheduled to be released in the coming weeks, were put out early after reporters requested data because of attacks on Romney at the summit, said Ed Stetzer, president of the Southern Baptist-affiliated organization.

"The view that Mormons are not Christians is the widely and strongly held view among Protestant pastors. That does not mean they do not respect Mormons as persons, share their values on family and have much in common. Yet, they simply view Mormonism as a distinct religion outside of basic teachings of Christianity. Many of these pastors may know Mormons who consider themselves Christians, but Protestant pastors overwhelmingly do not consider them such," said Stetzer. "I know this is an unpleasant question to many, and one that some will use as a hammer on evangelicals."

Mormons differ from most Protestants in how they view the Trinity. They also have scripture in addition to the Bible, such as the Book of Mormon, and believe in prophets such as Joseph Smith, Jr., who founded the Latter Day Saint movement.

While the Lifeway survey indicates that a majority of pastors may not support the Mormon religion, surveys on whether Americans would support a Mormon candidate are more mixed. A Pew Research Center survey from the summer said that one in four voters would be less likely to vote for a Mormon candidate and found that 34 percent of white evangelical Protestants held this view. A Gallup poll released in June also found that almost 20 percent of Republicans and independents would not vote for a Mormon president, compared to 27 percent of Democrats who said the same.

After the weekend's controversial statements on Romney's religion, prominent pastors are also coming to his defense. On Saturday, Rev. Myke Crowder, senior pastor of the Christian Life Center in Layton, Utah, and spokesman for the National Clergy Council, released a statement condemning Jeffress, who is a Southern Baptist.

"As an evangelical, born-again, Bible-believing Christian, and a pastor with more than 25 years' experience living with and ministering among a majority Mormon population, I find the comments by Pastor Jeffress unhelpful, impolite and out of place," he said. "I've been around long enough to remember when independent Baptists wouldn't pray with Southern Baptists, when fundamentalists called Southern Baptists compromisers and liberals, when Southern Baptists wouldn't keep company with Pentecostals and when Pentecostals wouldn't keep company with Catholics. That wasn't helpful to anyone. Insulting Mitt Romney adds nothing to the conversation about who should be president. We're picking the country's chief executive, not its senior pastor." huffpo with links

Spot the subliminal message, you wimin.

Read More

Mitt Romney's America: Even More of The Same

Just what the world and America needs.

Mind you, that's this week. The cartoon says everything that needs saying, but that man wants to be President so bad it's worrying, he'd sell his Granny for a vote.

America's saviour, the man in the magic underpants.

Romney: century of American dominance ahead
By Steve Peoples and Bruce Smith
October 7, 2011

CHARLESTON, S.C.—Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Friday the next president would face complex foreign policy decisions but offered few details on his plan for one of the nation's most protracted international entanglements -- the decade-old Afghanistan war.




Delivering his first major foreign policy address on the 10th anniversary of the conflict, the former Massachusetts governor said little about what he would do specifically about Afghanistan, where nearly 100,000 American troops are stationed today.

"I will order a full review of our transition to the Afghan military to secure that nation's sovereignty from the tyranny of the Taliban," Romney said near the end of his remarks, listing the Afghan war among eight priorities for his first 100 days in office. "The force level necessary to secure our gains and complete our mission successfully is a decision I will make free from politics."

The comment drew applause from the cadets and supporters who gathered at The Citadel, South Carolina's military college. But Afghanistan was almost an afterthought in Romney's speech, in which he made the case for a stronger military that would allow the United States to lead the world and help deter further violence.

He mentioned the name of the country three times in a speech that exceeded 2,800 words.

When pressed for details on Afghanistan during a morning briefing, a Romney foreign policy adviser declined to outline a Romney plan for Afghanistan and noted that the governor recognizes the difficulty of what America faces there.

On other issues, Romney said he would boost the number of Navy ships and pour more money into defense, outlining proposals to strengthen the military while rejecting multilateral institutions like the United Nations when necessary.

He also condemned the isolationist policies supported by some tea party activists.

"This is America's moment. We should embrace the challenge, not shrink from it, not crawl into an isolationist shell, not wave the white flag of surrender, nor give in to those who assert America's moment has passed. That is utter nonsense," he added.

Romney's first foreign policy speech as a candidate amounted to a show of force of sorts as he tries to position himself as the clear GOP frontrunner in the White House race. Some Republicans remain reluctant to support him but Romney has resumed his place atop national polling following Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent stumbles and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's decision not to run.

The sometimes hawkish policies Romney outlined Friday may draw criticism from the libertarian wing of his party but are designed to confront what may be the former businessman's most glaring weakness. While he served as a Mormon missionary in France more than four decades ago, he has only limited foreign policy experience. As he says in nearly every campaign stop, he has spent most of his life in the business world. Go to page two

A few from last time he ran. Things don't change much, apart from Mitt's position d'jour.








The American electorate.

Poll: Nearly half of Americans can’t name a single GOP presidential candidate more

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