Article VI Blog

Coverage of this Thursday’s impending speech remains massive, but at this point repetitive and lacking insight. We will see what the day holds. As yesterday, keep your eyes peeled on the blue box in the sidebar which will act as a sort of “ticker” linking to almost everything we find written about the speech. We will update this post through the day with actual news, or anything we deem worthy of comment.

The overnight coverage fell into three basic categories:

• What is Romney going to say?
• Having it completely wrong about what he is going to say
• What do Mormons think about all this

Let’s consider each in turn.

What do Mormons think about all this?

Well, there is only one story in this category from the Salt Lake Tribune, but it features our very own Lowell

They say they don’t want their sacred doctrines analyzed and possibly pilloried any more than usual by evangelical Christians or media commenters.

Nor should it be, which is why the indicators that Romney has given about what he is going to say are what they are.

Lowell: Today’s Salt Lake Tribune story focuses on the apprehensions many Mormons feel as Romney plans The Speech. I am quoted in the article, and am described as one who “worries that such a speech will set back the Mormon/Evangelical rapprochement about 30 years.” What I mean is not that the speech itself will do that, but that if the speech gets into LDS doctrine, the reaction from some Evangelicals, the MSM, and opposing campaigns could cause such a setback.

I kind of like Richard Bushman’s suggestion in the same Trib article:

“I think he should say, ‘We all have our own forms of Christianity and this is mine.’ ” said Bushman, professor emeritus at Columbia University who is doing research at the Huntington Library in Southern California.

Romney shouldn’t delve into unique Mormon beliefs, Bushman said, “just talk about what it meant to grow up in a Mormon Christian household, having family prayer, being a deacon, going on a mission, being a bishop.”

“Mitt seems too stiff and pre-molded. It would personalize him,” he said. “If he talked about his life, people would listen to him with more attention than anything he’s ever said. It would be reassuring.”

That approach might get Romney (and the rest of us) where we need to be.

What is Romney going to say?

The best of these is from the WBZ interviews, that were fairly widely discussed yesterday.

“This is not a repeat or an update of the Kennedy speech,” Romney said in responding to an audience question after delivering an economics presentation to the city Rotary club.

“I want to make sure that we maintain our religious heritage in this country, not a particular of faith, if you will, not of a particular sect or denomination, but rather the great moral heritage that we have that’s so critical to the future of this country,” Romney said. “So, I’ll be talking about faith in America — not my own faith in America — and of course I’ll answer the obligatory questions, as he did.”

Later, speaking with reporters, Romney said he was not trying to combat religious bigotry, despite some recent leafleting and phone calls criticizing his faith.

“I believe that the great majority of Americans select their candidates based upon their character, their heart, their vision for America, and I think as people look at me, they will see a guy who loves his wife, who’s raised kids, and they’ll see my values in my family,” he said.

You know it strikes me that the Kennedy speech was before the civil rights movement. The entire vocabulary of the nation has changed on matters such as this since then. Then labeling of all sorts was a matter of course. We discovered throught he civil rights movement, in which JFK played no small part, that labels were part fo the problem. We tried to learn to rise above them, as we need to here.

Getting it completely wrong

My personal fav in this category is the Catholic News Agency story as picked up here by “Indian Catholic” : Romney speech to give explanation of Mormonism. Precisely what Romney has said he is not going to do, and is widely acknowledged as the wrong thing to do. But I guess that won’t stop the press from desiring.

John updates at 8:20AM PST

David Limbaugh has published a widely distributed piece in which he thinks Romney is making a mistake.

Huckabee’s Christian credentials are doubtlessly helping him with many Christian conservatives. But I don’t think Mitt’s Mormonism is driving Romney voters to Huckabee. If Romney’s Mormonism didn’t bother them before Huckabee surged, it isn’t bothering them now.

He has a point there, up to a point. Huckabee’s rise has not, for the most part, come out of Romney’s hide – it has come from the disaffected Evangelicals that we have read so much about. The question is why were they disaffected so. Many blame Bush for failing to deliver what they thought he promised, but many were also disaffected by Romney’s Mormonism, they may have hidden behind the “flip-flop” thing, but that was just a blind. What Romney can do with this speech is win over those voters he has previously not had.

Limbaugh also contends:

Romney also runs a risk in giving a “religious” speech that skirts all theological questions, which is likely. After all, we almost never hear Mormons talking about what distinguishes their religion from mainstream Christianity. They emphasize — even on their TV commercials — their belief in the Bible and their emphasis on Jesus Christ.

If Romney gives a speech that never gets past these generalities, it may prompt critics to probe further and discover there are major differences in Mormonism and mainstream Christianity of which they were unaware.

Oh please, David, Romney is well inoculated against this. Mormon theology has been run through the ringer. The stories will appear, they would have appeared anyway on the tail of Huckabee’s rise, this speech represents Romney’s best bet to take control of that news cycle.

From this perspective, Romney has made it clear he is not out to defend Mormonism. He is out to defend the traditional American understanding of the place of religion in society. I for one wish such did not need defense, or that if it did it was better done by those of my own faith. But in this election cycle that task appears to have fallen on the Mormon candidate.

Such is sad commentary on at least one part of the greater Evangelical movement, and a mark of increasing social maturity on the part of Mormons, regardless of their theological status.

John updates at 12:25PM PST

Things are quite a bit quieter today than yesterday, but there is still some interesting tidbits. Jim Geragthy has sources inside the Romney campaign that note (HT: Blake Dvorak):

Finally, some of the other campaigns are spinning that Romney’s decision to give a religion speech this week is a direct response to Huckabee’s recent surge. This makes for an interesting theory, but it’s simply not true. The idea of doing such a speech has been in the works for months. If anything, the recent push-polling in Iowa attacking Romney’s Mormonism had more to do with the timing of the speech than Huckabee’s rise in the polls.

I just hope Romney did not make this decision in an understandable fit of pique over the push-polling.

At The Corner, Ramesh and K-Lo are exchanging thoughts on the speech and Ramesh is quite insightful:

The conventional wisdom seems to be that Romney’s decision to make a big speech about faith was a mistake—although the conventional wisdom until he made that decision was that he should do it.

Amen to that, but that does not prevent Dan Balz of the Washington Post’s “The Trail” blog from opining that religious liberty is precisely the wrong theme for Romney and Mormon distinctives are the right one.

The most provocative finding is that a plea for religious tolerance, a la Kennedy in 1960, will get Romney little in the way of political benefit. The survey, which included enough southern evangelicals in the sample to make analysis of that key voter bloc possible, looked at the impact of Romney’s religion on attitudes — and also what Romney might say to the public to dispel any concerns they might have.

[...]

In a memo summing up their findings, the three scholars wrote: “Voters across the board respond most favorably to a message that dispels the negative stereotypes about Mormons (such as learning that the church banned polygamy about 100 years ago, the LDS Church stresses traditional family values, and that the LDS Church’s policy is to be politically neutral). But what does NOT work is a simple appeal to religious tolerance.”

I am not sure “southern Evangelicals” are Romney’s target audience here. History, he will need to address to some small extent – the end of polygamy, but also Reed Smoot, but theonerdville is just not where this thing is going to go, nor should it. If I know Romney, his intent is to raise the bar of political discourse, not lower himself, and us with him into that kind of muck and mire.

John updates at 4:20PM PST

Things have slowed down tremendously as people wait for the speech to actually happen, but that does not keep many people from prognostication about what Romney will say, what Romney ought to say, and what is going to happen in reaction. Jim Geragthy fears “Barney the Dinosaur”

But it’s easy to see this not working out well. I fear that a little too much “I love my faith, you love your faith, we’re all one happy family under God,” will leave Romney sounding like Barney the Dinosaur. My personal taste would prefer a little bit of anger in this speech, a bit of what we saw when he got into it with that radio talk show host in Iowa. I think it’s okay for Romney to tell us that his faith and his relationship with God is his business (and His business), and that he’ll ask for our vote, but he won’t subject himself to a theological SAT.

I personally don’t find Barney the least bit scary, so I don’t see much to fear here. But I think the point about anger is well taken. Much of what has gone on and what is going on is outrageous and Romney needs to point that out. I once asked someone very close to Romney if he had a temper. There response was that he most definitely did. I too would like to see it.

He does not need to attack people, but he can grow angry at many of the wrongheaded ideas that are floating around. Lord knows I have….

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Electability, Political Strategy, Religious Bigotry, The Speech, Understanding Religion | 2 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

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