If and when in the last considerations I do look at it, it is only a small measure to gauge whether the candidate fully understands right from wrong. Obviously, this can be a misleading measure as all one has to do is look at the Huckster’s record and past behavior to know he has no idea…but, neither does Willard nor McCain for varying reasons.

Instruct and uphold the principles and values our founding father’s bothered to write out in their design of our government in maintaining our freedom.

Anything else is wrongheaded and an exercise towards our own demise.

Who are the Romans or non-believers in this picture.

As for me I am commanded to forgive, but I will never forget.

A summarizing introduction sounds almost if it could have been written as a 2008 Mitt post mortem:

“Of course on cultural issues there is little question that Latter-Day Saints are closer to the ‘orthodox’ right than the ‘progressive’ left. Latter-Day Saint beliefs and practices include a traditional allocation of gender roles within a two-parent family, a moral code that forbids all extramarital-marital sexual relations, a law of health that prohibits consumption of coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs, and doctrinal declarations that oppose abortion rights and same sex marriage, virtually all of these Latter-Day Saint attitudes and practices are shared with other conservative Christians. ‘A moralism that rejects social and individual permissiveness,’ concludes one study, ‘is where Mormons and conservative Christians stand on common ground.’

“Nevertheless Hunter’s interpretation of the sources of cultural conflict oversimplifies the political relationship of Latter-day Saints to other conservative Christians, especially conservative Protestants. Notwithstanding their similar cultural attitudes, Latter-day Saints and conservative Christians are divided on at least three important issues. First, Latter-day Saints have a historically shaped consciousness of the precariousness of minority religious status, a consciousness that is not generally shared by conservative Christians in the United States. Second, their radically different understanding of Christianity makes Latter-day Saints a target of criticism and attacks by more ‘orthodox’ Christians, especially fundamentalist and Evangelical
Protestants. Finally, in contrast to the resurgence of conservative Christian activism in the last two decades, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an institution has remained largely apolitical since the 1960s. The first two of these differences actually place Latter-day Saints as close to the cultural left as to the cultural right, if not closer, while the last
places Latter-day Saints outside of the culture war paradigm altogether. All of them suggest that Latter-day Saints should not be uncritically grouped with conservative Christians on cultural issues.”

In my own view, Prof. Gedicks attempts to make more of his final point than the evidence–and particularly the voting patterns of the LDS in comparison to conservative “orthodox” Christians–than the evidence warrants, but the perspective is worth considering as we all look back on a season in which the view of the LDS as “the other” has been pretty much the story line, if not entirely the whole story.

Basically, the SBC was apparently collaborating with Huckabee, however informally, because it got its members wound up like a crossbow, and all Huckabee had to do was point and shoot.

Now, Keeting, being a liberal, tries to depict the situation as a war between these two “most aggressive” denominations, but the only thing he can point to on the Mormon side is that the LDS Church built temples in Atlanta and Dallas, down in the Bible Belt, where the SBC is the Established Church, which constitutes serious dissing of the Baptists, according to the standards of the Crips and the Bloods. Keeting apparently thinks these were intial forays into the South by Mormons, rather than understanding that temples are the mark of a mature Mormon population that can devote the volunteer time to sustain and operate temples for the performance of eternla marriages and baptisms on behalf of dead ancestors. The Mormons were already in Dallas and Atlanta before the temples. And temples are not proselyting tools, since they are only open to Mormons in good standing. No non-Mormon, after the initial open house, would ever step foot inside, so how could they be used to proselyte or otherwise advance conversions?

What did the Mormons do while the Baptists were calling Mormons in general and Mitt Romney in particular “not Christian” and a lot worse things?

Not a thing. No official Mormon speech or publication attacked Baptists. No Mormon apostle called Baptists “non-Christian”. No Mormon Sunday School class was told in the official curriculum that Baptists are stupid or charlatans, or that Baptists don’t understand their own doctrines. No Mormons were picketing Baptist churches, and yelling obscenities at couples just married inside. No Mormon organization was attacking Mike Huckabee. Nada. Zilch. Nani-mo nai. Nothing.

It is left as an exercise for the reader as to which of the two churches mentioned here has, in the context of the current election process, demonstrated its devotion to the Second Great Commandment, to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”