The “Presbyterian” Romney and The Elephant in the Room
Usually when we say there is “an elephant in the room,” we are referring to a big, obvious issue that no one wants to acknowledge. But the pachyderm I’m talking about is different. We have taken to calling him The Question.
Almost everyone not only sees that elephant, but also admits he’s there– and no one seems reluctant to talk about him.
What we don’t agree on is this: Just how big is that elephant?
I think he’s huge. John, I’m guessing, thinks he’s a little smaller.
The Discussion
My statement of two days ago is the topic of the running debate– discussion, really– that John and I have been having:
I continue to believe that if Mitt Romney were a deeply religious Evangelical Presbyterian, with the same resume, he’d be the presumptive Republican nominee right now, way ahead of McCain, with Huckabee not even in the race. Why? Because Huck would not have been the “values voter” (meaning Evangelical) alternative to Romney. He never would have taken off in Iowa, conservatives would have flocked to Romney, and the entire narrative of this race would be different.
John concedes that as “a creedal Christian, of any stripe, Mitt Romney would have produced a very different narrative to the primaries,” but believes that Romney still would not have been “a sure thing.”
No argument from me there. I simply believe (and I think John agrees, for the most part) that the elephant in the room — Romney’s religion– was a huge factor that changed everything. Would he be the nominee without that factor in play? Maybe not. But the entire race would have been different.
The Unpleasant Truth
As I’ve written here before, during this Republican presidential campaign something very ugly arose. It manifested itself in various ways. Here are just a few examples:
- Mike Huckabee’s now infamous question about whether Mormons believe Jesus and Satan as brothers. What if Huckabee had said, “Don’t Catholics believe Mary and Jesus are co-redeemers of mankind?” He would not have dared say such a thing - and maybe that’s my point. But if he had, The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and similar organizations, would have been all over him. There is no “Mormon League.”
- The official web site of a mainstream candidate for President of the United States (Huckabee again) included comments like, “we cannot stand for this Mormon garbage to get into office.” Insert the word “Jewish” or “Catholic” or “”black” in that sentence for “Mormon” and ask yourself if a hue and cry would not have arisen in response to such statements. But no hue and cry arose, and the candidate left those comments — and links to viciously anti-Mormon web sites - up on his own official site.
- Someone named Joel Belz wrote an essay in World Magazine, a leading Evangelical publication, stating that Mormons as a group generally lie, and that Romney’s so-called “flip-flops” could be attributed to that Mormon tendency. What if Belz — or anyone, for that matter — had argued that “Jews steal,” and therefore Joseph Lieberman could not be trusted with control of the U.S. Treasury? You’re right, that’s unimaginable.
- A clearly on-the-fringe minister in Florida with an apparently large following makes headlines by saying “a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan.” Most respectable journalists probably didn’t want to call attention to this man’s rantings, but I have never seen a single denunciation of this nonsense from any leading journalist or religious figure.
The unpleasant and undeniable fact is that in the United States today it is still possible to get away with making statements about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that simply would not be tolerated regarding any other religious group.
Another unpleasant and undeniable fact is that by and large, such statements are not loudly and vigorously denounced, but get at most a sad shake of the head from observers who ought to be outraged.
That’s the true size of the elephant in our room.
Spotting the Idiots
I am not accustomed to playing the role of victim. My faith does not teach that approach to life, and I do not believe in it. Also, like Glenn Reynolds, I believe that free speech makes it easier to “spot the idiots. ” It sure is easy in this case.
But we need to do more than spot them.
One personal note: That the candidate who had to bear the brunt of this storm of bigotry is the most decent man I have ever seen run for national office makes the situation all the more galling.
Where Do We Go from Here?
Lest anyone think I am all “doom and gloom” about this situation, the contrary is true. I think the Romney candidacy shines a spotlight on this remaining bit of accepted bigotry. I really think it will get better. Not overnight, but sooner than it would have otherwise.
Who knows? Maybe Romney will run again in 2012, if McCain is not elected, and maybe in the next 3-4 years he can do some more work on convincing people that his faith ought not to be a barrier to his presidential hopes. Maybe he’ll have the luxury of getting a little feisty about the issue, like he did with that Iowa radio show host Jan Mickelson (video here).
One thing’s for sure: The discussion will never be the same. And that’s a good thing.
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4 Responses to “The “Presbyterian” Romney and The Elephant in the Room”
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4thnephite on 14 Feb 2008 at 8:46 am #
All through history true Christians were the minority, and that is the reason why Jesus spoke to his followers in Parables. The liberal elites of today and I think the Huckster can qualify are the Sanhedrin of old, they seem to know what is best for everyone.
I find the terminology, “The elephant is in the room” sorta apropos for the occasion,
The symbol for the Republican party and I for one have a very long memory.
One of the historians for the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints” gives many instances of our faith being persicuted for their belief, both as office holders and everyday citizens.
I refer to the writings of B.H. Roberts. Defense of the Faith and the Saints
God bless us all for all of the enlightenment he gives to us.
Eric on 14 Feb 2008 at 10:20 am #
I don’t think the elephant is quite as big as you suggest it is. But there’s no doubt that prejudice against Mormons exists and was a factor. I think that whatever problems Romney had with his Mormonism was compounded by the fact that he ran as someone other than who he is, as an ideologue rather than a technician. I don’t think he did an effective job of presenting his strengths, and thus he never really connected with voters, and certainly not in the way that Huckabee does. If he had been able to develop a connection, his religion probably would have been less of a factor.
Something we won’t know in this election cycle is how much bias there would have been against Huckabee if he had been perceived as having a real shot at getting the nomination. I would suggest that, at least in the general election, criticism of him for his faith would have been every bit as extensive as it would have been for Romney.
To the militantly secular, to the Bill Mahers of the world, for example, being Mormon is probably no better nor worse than being a Southern Baptist or a serious Catholic. But to those who don’t immediately put down the religious, there are some issues where an evangelical such as Huckabee would raise more concern than a Mormon would.
Here are a few instances: 1) The Mormon church has been relatively nonpolitical in recent decades; not so with many evangelical churches. 2) While Mormons have their quirky (to outsiders) beliefs, you don’t see the LDS church trying to rewrite science textbooks in the way that many evangelicals have tried to. 3) As a literal article of faith, Mormons believe that people should be able to worship God as they see fit, but there is a segment of evangelicalism that approaches favoring theocracy. 4) Many evangelicals believe that people who don’t believe as they do will burn in hell, raising questions about how well an evangelical president might deal with diversity. But Mormons are semi-universalistic and find much good in other religions. 5) Mormons place a high value on free will (agency), giving an LDS politician some cover for stating that he/she wouldn’t try to impose views on other people. 6) Southern Baptist (for example) statements on the role of women would probably be more threatening to many than the LDS Proclamation on the Family, which says nothing about wives submitting to their husbands. 7) The LDS church has had a relatively moderate position on issues such as abortion and stem cell research compared with the “pro-life” movement.
I’m not saying this to berate evangelicals — I come from a family of them! All I’m saying is that in a general election a Mormon very well may have no worse of a time handling religious biases than a hard-core evangelical would.
HaroldHutchison on 14 Feb 2008 at 2:10 pm #
Even if McCain is elected, I see him only serving one term.
Romney will be the heir apparent, and now, McCain owes him a favor.
coltakashi on 14 Feb 2008 at 2:18 pm #
I found very interesting the statement from John that Southern Baptists have a preferential attitude toward Southern Baptists over not only Mormons but also Presbyterians!
I do not dispute that, but I would love to know if there is historical evidence of that in elections in which the candidates, in states with a strong Southern Baptist constituency, were Presbyterian or one of the other disfavored religions that John listed.
Some defenders of the religious repudiation of Romney have cited the strong vote in Utah for Romney as evidence that Mormons also vote strongly in favor of a fellow Mormon.
I would dispute that. Mormons have of course voted for presidential candidates who were not Mormon since statehood. Utah has elected non-Mormon governors (Simon Bamberger was a Jew, J. Bracken Lee a generic Protestant) and a non-Mormon Senator (Thomas Kearns). The attempt by Mormon Orrin Hatch to run for president in 2000 aroused no significant support from his Utah constituents. And you can be sure that if Harry Reid was running for president, his being from neighboring Nevada and a Mormon would not do anything for the Republican Mormons.
Now of course, many Mormons in Utah did give financial support to Mormon Larry Echohawk when he was Idaho Attorney General running for governor of Idaho as a Democrat. His fund raising among Mormons in Utah was a handicap, added to his being a Democrat and an Indian, for many non-Mormons in Idaho.
Romney was a known quantity in Utah, a legitimate hero for saving the Olympics and turning an incipient disaster into a world-famous success. Compared to Romney, what had McCain or Huckabee ever done for Utah?
A study by political scientists showed that many of the people who justified their opposition to Romney on grounds that he was a “flip-flopper” were actually using that as an excuse to hide their religious antipathy. So I think that the religious motivations for opposing him were stronger than we would like to think. That does not mean that many Evangelicals did not decide to vote for him anyway. The fact that prominent Evangelicals endorse Romney is proof that many understood the difference between electing a president for the whole country–Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, etc.–and electing a pastor for your own church. But there is still a stubborn, significant minority who vote their prejudices.
I would like John to comment in more detail on the story told by Mr. Keating at The New Republic, that the Southern Baptist Convention was actively propagandizing against Mormons all through 2007, and that its December message was a warning that electing Romney would make Mormons “legitimate” and thus threaten to increase conversions to Mormonism. The SBC thus raised the stakes from control of the Executive Branch to the damnation of souls. “The White House might go to hell in a handbaslet, but heaven forbid that we allow Americans to go there because we elected a Mormon.”
The odd thing about that warning is that it is an admission that the more the world gets to know Romney, the more they will like his religion. That is not something that has been said about any other president. There are lots of historical articles and books about the effect of religion on specific presidents, especially Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. But I cannot think of ever seeing a book that discussed the effect that presidents had on the fortunes of a religion. Did the deists see an upsurge when Jefferson took office? Did Quakers get a bounce from Nixon?
If Mormonism is so inherently disgusting that people who look into it get more disgusted, shouldn’t Southern Baptists leaders WANT to elect Romney, so everyone in the world can see Mormons revealed as the (put in your favorite epithet here) that Baptists know them to be? Wouldn’t that single event do more to persuade people to stay away from Mormons and Mormonism?
In view of the religious xenophobia of the Southern baptists, as described by John, one can expect they will oppose the election of ANY Mormon to ANY political office even at the state level. Has that been true? My sense is that Representative Istook of Oklahoma, a Mormon who ran for governor, was defeated partyly due to such prejudice. So it appears that Mormons do not have the full rights of citizenship in predominantly Baptist states. They are apparently to be treated as dhimmi, second class citizens like Christians in Muslim countries.
That is a blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution and its guarantee of equality under the law. It appears that Baptists put the advancement of their religion above any principles taught in the US Constitution about equal justice. Which makes me wonder why they don’t come out of the closet and just form their own Baptist Party, so the rest of Republicans can choose a candidate without religion being a determining factor.