It’s still vacation time for Article VI Blog, but we will offer a few thoughts about the possibility (which some consider quite likely) that John McCain will select Governor Romney as his running mate.

If Romney were still in the race as an active presidential candidate, what impact would the Texas controversies over the polygamous FLDS movement had?  A poll conducted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the “Church”) revealed some interesting possibilities:

• More than a third of those surveyed (36 percent) erroneously thought that the Texas compound was part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or “Mormon Church” based in Salt Lake City
• 6 percent said the two groups were partly related.
• 29 percent correctly said the two groups were not connected at all
• 29 percent were not sure.

In addition, when asked specifically which religious organization members of the polygamous group belonged to:

• 30 percent said “Mormon,” “LDS” or “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”
• 14 percent said “FLDS”
• 6 percent said “Mormon fundamentalists”
• Nearly  half (44 percent) were unsure

As John might say, had Romney still been in the race, it would have gotten ugly.

Now ask yourself:  In the general election, what would Democrats do with this opportunity to obfuscate and smear?  That might be uglier still.  Would they do those things even against Romney as a vice presidential nominee?

On the brighter side, it appears unlikely that the MSM would be willing particiapants in such confusion-mongering.  Elder Lance Wickman, one of the Church’s general authorities and an attorney who is the Church’s General Counsel, issued a letter to the news media that included these significant paragraphs:

1. As reflected in the AP Style Guide, we ask that you and your organization refrain from referring to members of that polygamous sect as “fundamentalist Mormons” or “fundamentalist” members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
2. We ask that, when reporting about this Texas-based polygamous sect or any other polygamous group, you avoid either explicitly or implicitly any inference that these groups are affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
3. On those occasions when it may be necessary in your reporting to refer to the historical practice of plural marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that you make very clear that the Church does not condone the practice of polygamy and that it has been forbidden in the Church for over one hundred years.  Moreover, we absolutely condemn arranged or forced “marriages” of underage girls to anyone under any circumstances.   

Stated simply, we would like to be known and recognized for who we are and what we believe, and not be inaccurately associated with beliefs and practices that we condemn in the strongest terms. We would be grateful if you could circulate or copy this letter to your editorial staff and to your legal counsel.

It is significant, I think, that the letter came from legal counsel and not simply from the Church’s Public Affairs department, which has been issuing similar requests for years.  Also notable is the request that the letter be distributed not just to the media’s editorial staff, but also to their legal counsel.  The Church does not threaten legal action often, and the tone of Elder Wickman’s letter could not be kinder or more respectful; but the implicit threat of legal action seems quite remarkable to me.

Sadly, my crystal ball is still not working as well as I would like it to.  But I am sure that somewhere within Team McCain, these issues are being discussed.  My guess is that in the end, the decision will be made on other grounds, and that if Romney is McCain’s choice, any new media organization that actually uses editors will do its best to avoid smearing Romney by association with the FLDS or any other such organization.

Time will tell.  That’s the great thing about political prognosticating - eventually, we find out who was right and who was wrong.

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McCain appears to be getting serious about Veep selection and Romney is high atop the list. (What?  No Huckabee? NO SURPRISE.)  So the punditry is full of evaluations.  Here is Jonathan Martin’s and here’s a bit of a WSJ survey of commentary.  The words “religion” and “Mormon” appear nowhere in any of this?  I don’t think there was a single evaluation of Romney’s chances for the #1 slot that did not mention it.

(Lowell interjects:  Well, Jonathan Martin does mention it in passing among the “cons” of selecting Romney:

Yet for all his energy, Romney demonstrated trouble connecting with voters during the primary. His Mormonism was plainly a problem among some religious conservatives.

So the punditry is not ignoring The Question just yet.)

Questions:  Is this because the Veep slot just is not that serious? Did the primary campaign create an inoculation effect?  Would it not have been a serious issue in the primary absent Huckabee?  Will we hear from Evangelical leaders over the weekend?  Will anyone make something out of the proximate location of McCain’s weekend place to the Jello Belt?

If Romney is selected, more questions: Will The Question arise at a serious level?  Who will raise it?  There is little love between McCain and Evangelicals, though there appears to be resigned toleration at this point.  Would this cause Evangelicals to sit this one out?  How could Romney best be deployed in the campaign?  What will we hear first “Mormon” or “black liberation theology”?  Who will be the first to charge a potential Mormon assassination plot to gain the presidency? (Oh, it will happen somewhere in the deep ugly bowels of the Internet . . . .)

It could be an interesting long weekend.  We’ll post if something breaks, otherwise, enjoy the weekend.  We have turned off comment screening so our faithful readers can contemplate these questions and many more.

Oh Yeah…

There were a couple of interesting religion and politics articles yesterday.  This one on the California Supreme Court gay marriage decision and this one on an IRS ruling.
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Heck - Where The Coverage?

Clinton and Obama stood up for something called “The Compassion Forum” over the weekend. In some ways the thing bordered on a religious debate considering, for example, questions about why God allows suffering. More to the point it was an attempt to can religious credibility for Democratic candidates. A fact which, I think, accounts for the lack of serious coverage. Here is coverage from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the NYTimes. I did find one interesting commentary post.

Now imagine for a minute, if you will, a similar forum for Republicans. There would be massive coverage, all spun to make it look like Republicans were close-minded religious automatons. In the primary cycle now complete, there would have also been massive efforts to compare and contrast Romney’s views as a Mormon with the views of more mainstream Christians.

Had this event happened with Republicans, we would have been treated to endless commentary, blogging, TV discussions, etc. on how religion cannot creep too much into the public square - yet this event featured discussions of religion and religious issues in depths that Republicans would routinely refuse to answer - well, save for Huckabee who never passed up a religious question. What is amazingly outrageous is that Democrats who, for several decades, have decried the role of religion in politics - worked tirelessly to eliminate all mention of religion in a public setting - here invoked it on levels that Republicans could never contemplate.

I think this bespeaks an important point: Religion is a political hot potato and moderation in its discussion is key. With the Republicans apparently employing a religious test in the primary, this sort of discussion amongst the Democrats begins to look moderate. While they discussed the metaphysical and theological on levels we would never go near, they did talk about unity and diversity and community.

Our nation loves its religion when it builds bridges, but hates it when it builds walls. The Republican primary appeared to build a wall and the Democrats are not hesitating to capitalize on it. And what is worse, is this version of religiosity is not one that Republicans would agree with much when it comes down to policy. And so, once again, by applying a religious test, even if only amongst individual voters in the voting booth, we have limited our ability to get the policies we want, not enhanced it.

Oops . . .

Lowell jumps in:

I found the Democrats’ behavior in the Compassion Forum fascinating. (I understand McCain was invited but declined to attend. A wise decision, I think.) It makes me wonder if conservatives have a better substantive message, but lousy delivery.

Predictably, the religion Obama and Clinton professed Sunday was the “social gospel” type: Government is a means to deliver the charity taught in the Scriptures. As John notes, the MSM treated the event and its content as totally unremarkable.

I am wondering (worrying) that the Democrats’ religious “message” might be more appealing to the general public than the social conservative/values voter message we saw in the GOP primaries, which was largely driven by Evangelical and like-minded voters. I also worry that Huckabee-style overt religiosity will repel voters to whom the social gospel simply feels better. I am taking about people who are more interested in being made to feel comfortable by vague notions of a kind and benevolent government.

Finally, I worry that although most people probably like the more conservative, values-voter views about the big issues– i.e., the content of the message– most people also prefer a less strident tone. If that’s true, then conservatives win on debating points, but lose on style and delivery.

Speaking of which…

Obama’s “bitterness” gaffe is not playing well when it comes to the Dems’ attempts to garner a religious sheen. Which means we may have the opportunity to recover the high ground before it is all said and done, but we need to get about the business of digesting the lessons of the primary.

More On The Religiously Mute McCain . . .

This time from the Washington Times. And you know, given the analysis just completed, I am wondering if such muteness does not go a long way to explain the Republican primary results - not to mention bode well in the general with Obama’s problems.
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This past weekend has seen two stories evolve that illustrate to me that the American people may be willful, sometimes bigoted, often prejudiced; they can be narrow minded and sometimes thoughtless, but they are not dumb.

The first story concerns Obama’s “small town” comments of last week. I was offended by the reflection of Karl Marx and the denigration of religion inherent in the comments. As the outrage has evolved through the weekend, it is more about the insult offered small town America than it is intellectual vapidity, but outrage has emerged nonetheless. America gets it when they are being played for dumb, and they do not like it.

The other story that reflects the general intelligence of the American public is the raiding of the Warren Jeff’s polygamous compound in Texas of several days ago and the ensuing coverage. That story is better than 10 days old now and this post from a very small blog is the first one I have seen that even attempted to make any Mitt Romney related political comment out of it. Of course it is in the negative, and wrongly so.

The press coverage of the Texas events has been uneven in terms of its identification of the compound as “Mormon,” “breakaway,” or simply labeling it “polygamous sect,” but it seems clear to me that most Americans have gotten the message that this bust has little to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and certainly that is has nothing to do with Mitt Romney.

Interestingly, anti-Mormon sentiment was an undeniable factor in the primary campaign. I have always thought the root of that sentiment was ignorance about what the modern CJCLDS looks like. There does appear to be more at play than that.
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This blog often defies characterization.  We seem liberal to the extent that we want to lessen religio-speak in campaigns, at least from their current levels, but we are rock solid conservative when it comes to our values.  To meet our mission we have even defended the right of Obama’s pastor to make his abysmal statements , even though he makes many purely political statements under the guise of religion.  But there are limits.

Those of us that remember the dark days of potential world-wide communist domination remember one of Marx’s fundamental maxims: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”  Marx is long dead, as is communism in large part, but that idea survives today and defines the hard left.  Which means that Barak Obama defined himself yesterday when he said:

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

If that is not a restatement of the Marxist ideal, I do not know what is!  Worse yet, it is the antithesis of the America ideal for religion and politics.  In this statement Obama, literally sees government as the true savior and religion as the false substitute.  I need to take a deep breath here.

It is hard to know where to begin with something like this.  This statement is so charged, and so wrong on so many levels (philosophically, historically, theologically, constitutionally. . .) that I could go on for hours.   It is the weekend and I do not want to get that deep.  Fortunately, this mode of thought has been so analyzed over the last century precisely because of Marx that if you google around a bit, you will read everything you need and even more you don’t.

I will limit my brief comments to political.  We shall here discover whether Obama really is the press’ golden boy.  If this statement stays under-reported and does not reach the general public in overdoses, we can conclude that the media is in the bag for him.  You know all that stuff we have been looking at here over the last couple of years about liberal Evangelicals and Democrats wooing the religious vote, and so forth.  Well, that all should, at this point, be swirling the bowl.

Even the religious left believe their faith is real and valuable, not merely a substitute for government, not some construct designed to mollify an otherwise dissatisfied citizenry.

This statement is also fascinating on a social/cultural level and it ties in deeply with whole Oprah phenomena, but I don’t want to get into that right now.  Think about it though.

Spread the word on this one, dear reader.  A McCain presidency looks more likely every time you do.  And frankly, while Mr. McCain was not my personal choice in nominees, he is looking better and better by the minute with opposition like this.

Lowell adds:  The problem is, the majority of the legacy news media sees “the heartland” the same way Obama does.  It will be interesting to see how the story is played.
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Mike Huckabee has shared some thoughts on his campaign with the Washington Times. As a source of points for discussion the article is very .  .  .  rich.

First, Huck clearly thinks he was done in by evangelical leaders who did not support him because they are jealous for their influence:

“Rank-and-file evangelicals supported me strongly, but a lot of the leadership did not,” the former Arkansas governor says. “Let’s face it, if you’re not going to be king, the next best thing is to be the kingmaker. And if the person gets there without you, you become less relevant.”

I think he’s wrong about his Evangelical support. If memory serves me, in most, if not all, primary states Huckabee got a large chunk of the Evangelical vote, but I am not sure he ever got a majority of it, at least when Romney was still in the race.  [Note:  See the comment to this post by Texan, who has a breakdown of the Evangelical vote.] 

But beyond that, I simply adore Huck’s narcissicm: He thinks the real reason “the leadership” did not support him was their own personal selfish motives. Golly, Mike, could it be that they simply did not think you were the best candidate? Gary Bauer, who has always backed McCain, said it best:

Mr. Huckabee “ran an honorable campaign, but in spite of his successes I saw no evidence that he could bring together the three main parts of the Reagan electoral constituency — defense, economic and social conservatives.

“If he asked my advice, it would be to try to do that in the months and years ahead,” he said.

In other words, get to the right place on the issues! What a concept that must be for Huck, who clearly thought Evangelicals should support him just because he is . . . an Evangelical. Can you say, “identity politics?”

As for the idea that those nasty, self-absorbed Evangelical leaders withheld support from Huck in order to preserve their own influence and “king-maker” status . . . I am going to let John weigh in on that. We have said here that what Huck himself really wants is to be a king-maker.  The psychological concept of “projection” comes to mind.

The article offers an interesting breakdown of where the Evangelical support went:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson backed Rudolph W. Giuliani; American Value President and former presidential hopeful Gary Bauer endorsed Sen. John McCain; and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins remained neutral, even as Mr. Huckabee was wowing their supporters and winning the values voter straw polls they organized.

No mention of Jay Sekulow, Mark DeMoss, and Bob Jones III, all of whom supported Romney.

But forget all that.  This may be my favorite ‘graph in the article:

Mr. Huckabee says . . . the press undermined his prospects by too often mentioning he was a Baptist minister before he was an elected official.

“The qualification for me being president is not that I was a pastor 20 years ago [but] that I effectively governed a state, running a microcosm of the federal government,” Mr. Huckabee said in an interview with The Washington Times.  [Emphasis added.]

Oh, where to begin?  Where to begin?

Did Huck not run ads touting himself as a “Christian leader” in Iowa, or is my memory playing tricks on me? No, I think he really did that.

Did he not use religious imagery in his speeches repeatedly? Ad nauseum? Yes, I think he did that.

And wasn’t there another candidate in the race, Mitt Romney, also a former governor, whose religion was mentioned in almost every news article about him — even though Romney never brought it up himself? Yes, I think there was.

Most people who are paying attention noticed these things.  But when your name is Mike Huckabee and you have a “poor me” whiner complex, I guess that’s how you see the world.

John Chimes In: I am under the weather, so this will be brief.  I will address only that that Lowell has asked me to, though this piece is indeed a “target rich environment.” Most evangelical leaders are pretty smart cookies politically. What they want is to be effective. That means they back the best candidate, not the one most like them. In our opinion, and the opinion of many of them that I have heard from privately, that best candidate was Mitt Romney. But, those same leaders did not go for Mitt either, largely - there are the exceptions Lowell notes, but largely, evangelical leadership was on the sidelines in this one. The key question is why.

There was with Romney an unease based on faith. Most leaders I know knew of that unease, but also knew he was the best candidate and that unease could be overcome. But then enter Mike Huckabee and his faith appeals. And even though his ads, what few there were, got more secular outside Iowa, his network was almost purely church-based — everywhere. That gave that unease a place to land. So rather than have to work to overcome it, people experiencing that unease simply went Huck’s way. Some would have gone to Romney, and many I suspect would have simply sat this one out.

What this did was put Evangelical leadership between a rock and a hard place. Their constituents largely had focused on Huckabee and their unease with Romney’s faith was growing into opposition given that Huck was providing them cover. This left the leadership with a choice: Risk crossing their constituencies and losing their leadership capabilities; go for a candidate they could not back on the issues, as the article cites - and who they thought was a loser; or sit on the sidelines.  Of course, they chose the latter. The net effect, however, is that Evangelicals have no voice in this election.  At least they kept their power bases intact to fight another day.

One final quick comment:  Huck is attempting here to shape history contrary to reality. His denial of the very issues he shaped his campaign with, in order to make that campaign look more acceptable, is deplorable. It begins to call into serious question not just his politics, but his character — and I really hate to say that about a fellow Evangelical.
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