Oh, It Does Matter About Religion and the Veep?

The Penn student paper wonders about the chances of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, and early McCain supporter and Penn alum, for the Veep slot. This would be nothing more than a “local interest” story (Huntsman daughter is a current Penn student and I rarely hear his name mentioned for the slot) save for this little bit of student analysis:

Huntsman endorsed McCain in March 2006, despite strong support for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Utah and the fact that both Romney and Huntsman are Mormon.

Is it just me, or is that statement not full of a whole bunch of bigoted presumptions? That a governor would endorse counter to the overwhelming votes of his constituents is a political risk, but to presume that he would endorse on the basis os relgious commonality sort of calls into question that value of a Penn education. I would think even the largely liberal nature of higher education in this day and age would overcome this kind of bigoted presumptiveness.

But then. look at the current mess the Dems are in. Such are the fruits of playing by identity instead of ignoring identity….

Preachers, Identity and History

Politico Editor Andrew Glass looks at past incidents of preachers changing campaigns.  Glass discusses the 1884 election and Samuel Burchard’s famous “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” slur, as well as the 1938 grossly and horrifically anti-Semitic utterance of Catholic priest, Father Coughlin.  Both are horrific instances of religious bigotry and hatered in our nations history and both were formative in elections.

I have but one question - why recall these stories now when the Dems have their issues, but not when the Republicans had theirs?

The short answer is the religious issues in the Republican race were more complex, far less “in-your-face,” and expressed far more subtlety.   In other words, reporters are a lazy lot.  Not much of an excuse though.
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