Posted by
King Liberal on Wednesday, December 05, 2007 8:26:24 PM
First let me say right off that I know very little about the Mormon religion. I like it that way. And I don't think I want or need Mitt Romney to explain or not explain his faith to me. I take it on face value that his overall belief in God informs his values and that is fine by me. Nowhere in the job requirement for POTUS does it say that a candidate must be a person of a particular religion, but I see a danger emerging that will effect the overall election especially with conservatives. Mitt now feels compelled to deliver a JFK style speech(he's already backing away from that description saying JKF already gave the definitive speech on religion in America) and will do so tomorrow at the George H.W. Bush Library to an audience of reporters and interested parties. JFK gave his speech to a collection of mixed Clergy and I must point out it was not so much the speech but the Q&A session afterwards where they repeatedly asked him if he was going to be taking orders from the Pope.
I have a suspicion that Romney is not going to follow suit on that point and that is the true error in his tactics. Instead of confronting an audience of evangelical Christians he's going to allow the Media to take his words and refilter his religious beliefs to the American people. Not a good idea. It seems to me that the only reason Mitt is giving this speech is because Pastor Huckabee is passing him in the polls. Should Mitt feel threatened by Huck's emergence? And is Huck's emergence truly an issue of religious preference? Some would argue Huckabee is on fire because of his views on the fair tax and not his religious beliefs. Maybe Romney would be better off addressing that in a speech instead of laying bare his Religion to public scrutiny. I don't plan on listening. I don't need to know about Romney's faith to know if I would vote for him. I do however need to hear him lay out his plans for energy independence, the war on terror, and his economic plan for the country's future.
If conservative candidates engage in vote pandering by way of claiming to be the most religion, the most devout, or whatever it will start to detract from the overall platform as the smears will get nasty and leave many religious conservative angry at their own candidates for engaging in the denigration of another 's faith. I think it's fair to point out George W. Bush's used faith to create a coalition that is now in tatters; an argument over the Mormon religion will do little to nothing to bring that coalition back together.