Article VI Blog

Everybody has an opinion about what went down at the Glenn Beck promoted rally in Washington last weekend.  Was it political?  Or was it religious?  Rally or revival?

Well, frankly, it was all of the above.

The United States of America has always been a religious nation without a specific religion.   We have always had something variously called the “civic” or “civil” or “public” religion that was pious, moral, believed in a supernatural and an objective good, but was insufficiently defined ever to rise to the level of an actual, organized religion.  It was a banner under which many religions united to work together as a nation.  This compromise has served us well because religion has flourished in our nation like no other place in history.

The civic religion has served as “battleground” that defined the rules of conflict between competing specific religions, and by keeping that conflict civil, forces that have ripped apart virtually every nation in history have been held at bay.  But some aspects of the civil religion are beginning to fray.  The belief in a supernatural and objective good seems no longer to be part of the common understanding of our nation.  One would think that in such a circumstance those of us that still hold such would unite under a banner to restore it – if we do not, the consequences would be disastrous.  NO religion will survive.

Ross Douthat’s analysis of the Beck rally is both insightful and problematic.  Insightful in this:

Latter Day Saints and evangelical Christians arguably share enough affinities to belong in the same “cultural family,” as Weigel puts it. But you’re more likely to find them in competition, from the streets of American suburbia to the mission fields of the developing world to the 2008 election’s great Mike Huckabee-Mitt Romney throwdown. It’s a case of theological differences trumping cultural commonalities: The two faiths occupy opposite sides of a theological chasm that makes the gulf between Catholics and Protestants look narrow by comparison, and many evangelicals bristle with hostility for what they regard as Mormonism’s cultish pseudo-Christianity.

The problems arise when he then goes on to seemingly fan the flames of the conflict rather than try to quell them.  Yes, we do compete in the mission field, but if our nation cannot maintain its civil religion and accompanying religious truce in governance, there will be no mission field on which to compete – all religion will find itself banned, or an “official” religion will squeeze the rest of us out.

Some, worried that capitalism and politics will become a god, sound warnings that lead others to send for the wrong message at the wrong time. The forces that deeply oppose, those that do not believe in the supernatural and objective good, will – when they get the story straight – use our religious differences to split a coalition that could otherwise preserve the civic religion.  They will try to make us look foolish.  They will look calm and cool and collected while we will look like religious thugs.

The analogy is old and tired, perhaps to the point of triteness, but that does not rob it of its essential truth – It was necessary to ally with Stalin to defeat Hitler.  There was an imminent and violent threat that had to be dealt with before the subtle and quiet threat of communism.

There is an imminent and violent threat to religion in America right now – and it must be dealt with before the religious “cold war” between the faiths can be fought.  The Beck rally in Washington this weekend past was about that pressing threat.  I’ll take any ally I can get.

Posted in News Media Bias, Reading List, Religious Freedom, Understanding Religion | 1 Comment » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

It seems to be “Mormons  and the Presidency” week in the Utah press – likely because Huntsman is sniffing about.  It started with the Deseret News piece we examined Monday.   SLC TV station KSL followed up by talking to some actual experts on the subject that were pretty smart.  But SLTrib blogger Glen Warchol really takes the cake.  In our analysis Monday we drew a comparison between Romney and Huntsman and their approaches to religion.   Our case was that Huntsman was running away from his faith and Romney had never wavered.

The SLTrib’s opposition to Mormonism in general and Romney in particular is no secret. Peggy Fletcher Stack’s work for that paper is exceptional in its coverage of Mormonism and she appears truly neutral on the candidates, but she also appears token at the paper.  So it is unsurprising that their blogger would try to spin the story, but some things are just ridiculous:

The 2012 presidential election’s wandering in the wilderness has begun in earnest and Utah has two potential candidates in high weeds wrestling with a special challenge — they’re Mormons. But Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. are taking different approaches to downplay their long, proud Mormon heritages.

According to the Deseret News, Mitt Romney, who was slammed by conservative Christians despite his openness in explaining his religious beliefs, is going to duck the question and hope for the best.

Romney is going to “downplay” and “duck” “despite his openness?”  Can anyone figure that out for me?  Here’s my best guess – pure political spin.  Warchol is hoping that you will walk away with the words “downplay” and “duck” stuck in your mind and that will form your opinion of Romney instead of the actual facts, which by his oxymoronic formulation he can claim he has reported.  That’s spin at its finest (worst?).

Being a blog post, partisanship is expected, even when paper branded, so we cannot really bust his chops for media bias here, but spin is simply abominable.   If you oppose someone, you should have the honesty to simply do so straightforwardly and directly.  And the backhanded use of religion as the attack weapon of choice, well…let’s call it “Huckesque” and leave it at that.

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John and I feel somewhat validated – but not at all surprised – by this report of a scholar’s analysis of Romney and religion in the 2008 presidential election cycle.

The paper, entitled “Mitt Romney’s Religion: A Five Factor Model for Analysis of Media Representation of Mormon Identity,” appeared in the May issue of The Journal of Media and Religion. This paragraph will bring a smile to those who’ve followed this blog for a while:

For many, the combination of Mormonism and Romney’s ‘flip-flops’ on many hot-button issues gave reason to oppose him. Conservative activist Brian Camenker’s report on Romney’s shifting positions gave ammunition to conservatives to withdraw support from Romney. Vanderbilt University researchers found Romney’s flip-flopper label was an easy cover for anti-Mormonism. In the end, it was the rise of Huckabee and the political primaries in the evangelical-dominated South that derailed Romney’s bid for the presidency. For many, Romney’s run represented a misguided attempt to curry the favor of evangelicals.

That almost makes me think Professor Baker is also a regular reader here. (Seriously, with this paper she has moved to the top of my list of “People I’d Like to Have Lunch With.”)

Here is the article abstract from The Journal of Media and Religion (it costs $30 to see the entire piece):

Mitt Romney’s religion accounted for 50% of all religion-related presidential primary campaign stories in 2007, and 30% of Romney’s total media coverage focused on his Mormon faith. This article reviews that coverage and considers it within the larger historical context of the complex relationship between media and Mormonism throughout the 180-year history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A factorial model (the first in the area of Mormon Media Studies) is proposed by which to document and analyze the wider societal influences that are reflected in media representation of Mormon identity. The model’s 5 factors include the media, the Mormons, other religions, secular influences, and politics/government. The model assumes an interrelationship among the five factors. Factor influence and relationships among factors vary according to time, issue, and circumstance. The model relates to informational (not entertainment) media. Suggestions are made for application of the model to academic studies.

As I jokingly note above, we documented and analyzed all of this as it occurred.  If you’re interested and want to save $30, be sure to read our “Telling The Story” series for our version of this same tale, minus the Smoot comparisons, which we examined in our five-part series reviewing and commenting on Kathleen Flake’s book “The Politics of American Religious Identity.”  You may recall that Flake’s book was about the Smoot seating hearings.  You can find our posts about that here - here – here – here and here.

John Jumps On Board…

..Because The Huckabee “boomlet” has become a “Boom?!”

In the words of Jacob McCandles when confronted with rumors of his death: “Not hardly.“  Here’s how this went down.  Huckabee did Fox News Sunday last Sunday.  If you read the transcript, this is what he says:

I haven’t closed the door. I think that would be foolish on my part, especially when poll after poll shows that there is strong sentiment out there. I end up leading a lot of the polls. I’m the Republican that clearly, at this point, does better against Obama than any other Republican. You know, I’m not totally unaware of that.

At which point the MSM and leftie blogs went ape – The Hill – HuffPo – Politics Daily – The Fix – USAToday – one very right wing outlet sounded the trumpets – News Max.  His home town paper was a bit less impressed.

Let’s analyze what’s really happening here.  Fox commentator Huckabee appears on FNS in a short segment.  That sounds more like a promotional appearance than a serious interview to me.  The idea was to generate some heat for Huckabee’s show and based on the coverage, I think they got it.  Secondly, Huckabee is prone to exaggerated claims.  He still claims to have finished “second” in the 2008 primary race despite the fact the delegate count, and his speaking slot at the convention, clearly indicate to the contrary, even though he stayed in the race far longer than the actual second place finisher – Romney.

Huckabee is a media guy now – he has speaking fees to maintain, and his bread-and-butter constituency is not what it used to be.  The Huckster needs the possibility of a run to continue to make a living.  And of course, the MSM and non-team players are always willing to stir the pot on our side.

There’s a lot of coverage here, but no meat on the bones.  Call me when Huck’s fundraising gets better and he loses at least 60 pounds, until then its all posturing for ratings and fees.

UPDATE (7 hours after initial publication) – Told ya so! I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet….  Back to the initial post.

And Speaking of Lefties Doing Some Pot Stirring…

What do you think Marc Ambinder is up to with this piece?  [Lowell interjects:  I do not like his suggestion that Iowa and New Hampshire just be allowed to go ahead with their February primaries.   Why should those two quirky, small states, whose voting is so easily manipulated, be allowed to set the tone for the entire campaign?]

Mormon Stuff…

This is silly, and discriminatory – CNBC covering “Mormon” business.  Most business school graduates prefer to hire grads of the same business school,  Nothing to see here.

This is just great read.  Would that other forms of Christianity were as open minded.

Here’s another one with idiot commenters.  Why someone has to turn that story into a religio-political comment is beyond.

General Religion Stuff…

This is so utterly simplistic as to be annoying.  (In fact it is self-contradictory, but it is not worth the effort to demonstrate that fully here.)  One can judge a candidate’s character, or stance on issues, without reference to religion.  Religion does indeed influence those things, but it is not wholly determinative.  When you drag religion into it, it indeed starts to get about “us” and “them” instead of about the issues at hand.  And that leads to unnecessary conflict.

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Electability, News Media Bias, Political Strategy, Religious Bigotry, Telling The Story, The Speech | 3 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

If you’re following this issue you won’t want to miss Ross Douthat’s piece in the New York Times today. The take-home point:

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

I agree with John’s post below (responding to my own post just below his): I do not like religious humor.  (I do recognize that it will always be with us, however.)  So the announcment that South Park’s creators plan a Broadway play making fun of my own religion (Mormonism) did not make me happy. The only silver lining I can see is that at least my church is considered sufficiently important to warrant satiric attack.

But back to Douthat’s op-ed. Read the whole thing.

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Between “The Way to Win” and “Game Change,” Mark Halperin is clearly trying to distinguish himself as the journalistic guru of presidential elections.  However, between the utter disdain for any form of alternative and new media he expresses in “The Way to Win” and his fawning over Obama in “Game Change” he is proving primarily to be little more than the typical MSM, left-leaning dinosaur.  “Game Change” is particularly egregious in its utter lack of self-examination.  While he acknowledges the general perception of just about everyone that the MSM were in the tank for Obama, he fails to examine the claim at all!  You would think that someone so firmly planted in the center of the MSM as an editor of Time would at least bother to get a little defensive in a book like that.  And yet, despite his description of new media as a “freak show” in TWTW, he completely fails to discuss the incredibly freakish behavior of the MSM, even by MSM standards, other than quoting his sources inside the various campaigns.

Regardless, he is plowing ahead as if when it comes to presidential elections, he is “The Voice” – of what I have no idea, but he just writes that way.  So, when he published in Time this week a look ahead at 2012, people listened.  The piece in question is an obvious attempt to revitalize Obama’s rapidly fading political fortunes by painting the entire list of Republican possibles as somehow unelectable, and grossly disorganized.  He focuses most of his attention on Romney and Pawlenty, as is fitting since they are the only two seriously at work right now.  His analysis of Pawlenty is so brief as to be almost nonexistent.  It is actually Romney that is the target of his “wisdom.”  Before we get to religion, let’s address this comment:

But his liabilities are equally formidable. . . . and, perhaps as grave — no kidding — his striking nonchalance about transporting the family dog in a box tied to the roof of his car en route to a family vacation.

Look, I follow this stuff pretty closely and I have not heard anyone in serious political circles bring that story up since 2007.   I am sure the loony left of the animal rights movement have not let go of it, but how many of those people are there?  Ten . . . twelve?  Come on, Halperin, if you want to dredge up old worn out stuff to help your candidate, you’re going to have to do better than that.  And yet, the most left newspaper in all of Great Britain thought enough of it to not only pass it on, but embellish it a bit:

Meanwhile, this business with his dog in a box on the roof of the car as the family took a driving vacation/motoring holiday seems to be mushrooming into for Romney what the haircuts were for John Edwards. I would think Republicans would like it. He shows he’s pro-torture.

That’s echo chamber stuff if I ever heard it – and I hate to break it to these guys, most Americans do not live in the chamber.

I did that in part to set up the real discussion which is Halperin’s invocation of the Mormon issue:

Romney has the stronger hand but some real problems. He retains almost all the strengths he brought to the battle two years ago, when he was the runner-up to McCain: a record of accomplishment in business and government; a stately mien (and famously great hair); a solid and photogenic family; a New England base, anchored by a vacation home in primary-powered New Hampshire; and vast personal wealth and fundraiser prowess. But his liabilities are equally formidable. Some are the public’s long-standing bigotry against his Mormon faith. . . .

Romney has new challenges too. For one, he hasn’t demonstrated that he has learned some key lessons from 2008, and he still seems unable to talk openly and with passion about his faith or political convictions.

This too was echoed elsewhere, this time in an oddsmaker’s take on the field:

The ugly truth of the Southern Baptist-dominated Christian Right in the US is that while it shares so much political ideology with the faithful of the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), the bigotry against their religious cousins (See: The American Religion: The Emergence of The Post-Christian Nation, by Harold Bloom, 1993, Simon & Schuster) is far too steep a barrier for Romney to survive politically.

Were these efforts not so transparent they would be dangerous.  What we can take away from this primarily is that with Obama clearly fading in the polls, the left is trying desperately to tilt him up by taking negative shots at the presumptive Republican nominee.   But they have little ammunition to do so with, so they repeat, without a hint of variance, the line of argument that they think worked last time.  Please note, both accounts take shots at the traditionally Christian right that are much harder than the shots they take at Romney.  According to these guys, I wear a hood and burn crosses in my spare time.

What they fail to realize is the incredible animosity that such attacks generate and the ever building opposition that Obama is generating as he treats the American people as if they are too dumb to know what is good for them. Yes, Romney has a religion issue, but it is fading into the woodwork pretty rapidly as people just get angrier and angrier at the current occupant of the White House.  If Obama keeps going like this “anybody-but-Obama” will trump “anybody-but-a-Mormon” going away.

Halperin’s piece is about matching up against Obama, not the primaries.  He acts as if the religion issue will be as active in the general as it was in the ‘08 primaries.  Heck, it’s not going to play as hard in the primaries as it did last time unless Huckabee or some other foolish stand-in wants to shoot themselves in the foot very publicly.  And even then it will be more sound and fury than political reality.  Most Republicans, even those of us heavily motivated by our religious convictions, can do enough political math to understand that we divided ourselves last time and that’s why we lost.  That mistake will be too fresh in everyone’s mind to be repeated this time.  We are not THAT stupid.

Bottom line is this – Romney has some challenges ahead of him, any aspirant to office does.  And they are right in the areas where some of them will be, including religion, but this stuff is so overstated and so fawning over Obama as to be almost parody.  Obama will not be “easy pickin’s” in ‘12, but the bar is lowering quite a bit from ‘08, and if the MSM continues to sound like they did in ‘08 they will ride the bar into bankruptcy – at least those that are not already there.

Lowell adds . . .

It seems that Mark Halperin wants to be the next Theodore White.  We’ll see if he succeeds, but I am skeptical.  (I mean, the dog on the car roof story?  Really?)

And by the way, let’s keep in mind that the “oddsmaker” who wrote about Romney’s membership in “The Church of the Latter-day Saints” (always suspect a would-be pundit who can’t get right the name of the church he’s writing about) is a man named Al Giordano.  Mr. Giordano is the publisher of The Narco News Bulletin, “Reporting on Democracy and The Drug War from All America.” (Hint:  He’s not in favor of the drug war.)  Now, I don’t know Mr. Giordano but when it comes to evaluating Republican candidates I think he has a credibility problem.  This is a pundit who calls Sara Palin and Mike Huckabee “the crazies.”  Now, there are many grounds on which to criticize Palin and Huck, but that they are crazy is not one of them.

The fact is, at this point Romney is the front-runner and no one has the money, the organization, and the rapidly-increasing pile of political chits that the Governor has.  The political battlefields have been littered over the years with the bones of early front-runners, but Halperin has got to come up with some substance before anyone pays much attention to his rather vapid thoughts, recycled from 2007-08.

And with that, I am out of here!

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“Romney, a Mormon”…

When we wrote our 2008 recount, we defined that meme as one of the more damaging actions of the press during the cycle.  It did the most damage in Iowa and last week saw Romney return to Iowa on his book tour.  Here’s the story from the Des Moines Register and the Iowa Politics blog.  Should Romney elect to run in 2012, Iowa does present him with some serious strategic challenges.  Recent polling suggests that today the GOP primary choices are Romney and Huckabee, and Iowa was where their showdown in 2008 really mattered.  We still think the odds of the Huckster getting in are low, but given that his success in Iowa was based largely on his playing the Mormon card, it would not be hard for someone else to do so this time around leaving the battle lines about where they are.

Thus it is quite legitimate for Jonathon Martin at Politico to write a piece about possible Romney Iowa strategy, or for Ben Smith to point out that his book signing looked a lot like a campaign event.   Martin saves until the 4th from last paragraph of a long piece, this little goody:

His problem in 2008 wasn’t just that the evangelicals who dominated the process wouldn’t support a Mormon candidate; it was also that Romney struggled at times to connect with voters who demand personal contact.

I think Martin is right in that.  Romney is impressive and “real” when you meet him.  Pressing the flesh can go a long way to overcome suspicion concerning his religion.   It’s the comments to both of these posts where one starts to really see problems.  From the Smith post (this is the entire comment):

Come on. No-one is going to elect a Mormon to the presidency.

It gets worse from there.  (Dear readers, please do not forget our call to Online Activism.)  But aside from the usual snotty stuff, both post’s comments have some serious discussion about Romney’s religion and its effect on his electability.  I heard the same sort of discussion after a public event a week or so ago where presidential possibilities were examined.

The very left “Media Matters” tried to respond to Martin, but they were typically snippy and dismissive.  The very first comment out of the bag on that post:

The other Romney Riddle: will the Sarah Palin Troglodyte Christian Nutbag wing of the Republican Party really support a Mormon? They consider Mormonism a cult, you know. In their minds, it’s about the same as Scientology.

Which brings me to the main point I want to make here.  Romney’s religion is a not a factor that we can consider in political calculation, even in reasonable discussion.  We went through this with Jim Geraghty in the last cycle.  Accepting his religion as a factor accepts that which is unacceptable.  Such discussion must be denounced.  Legitimizing it in any fashion leads precisely to what we see in the Media Matters comments – derision towards religion generally.

And make no mistake, the left wants this is a big way.  It is clear that Democrats see Romney as the current front runner – Obama is setting him up to take the hit over healthcare that he does not deserve.  We have already discussed how the entire health care thing feeds the “flip-flip” mis-impression which is fueled by Mormon suspicion.   If we take Mormon out of the equation, that house of cards grows a lot weaker.

It is very sad to me that some of my fellow orthodox Christians, very smart ones for that matter, fail to see that singling out Mormons leaves the door open for the same kind of ugly attacks against them that Mormons have suffered.  That is why I tend to agree with this guy – a Mormon analog to the ADL might be a useful thing – and I think smart orthodox Christians would be behind it as well – for the reasons I just discussed.

You Need Look No Farther…

…than the coverage of the so-called “Christian” militia story of the last week if you doubt my contention that the left wants to put orthodox Christianity into the same cross-hairs as the Mormons.  We need look no further than Great Britain where Christians are “held in contempt.”  Of course, we do not always help ourselves.   Consider this coverage:

• CNN
• TPM – more
• Examiner

Surprisingly, it is a gay outlet that points out that the only one of this bunch that appears to be a registered voter is a Democrat.  These people are about a “Christian” as the FLDS is “Mormon.”  The press has beaten the very specious connection of these people to the Christian faith to death.  The appear to have no motive to do so other than to paint Christianity is general as populated by wackos, violent wackos – certainly angry wackos.

This stuff not only hurts Christianity, it hurts Republicans.  There is no question that the Tea Party folks are a bit angry.  Dan Quayle is concerned they will go third party, but Salon, the lovely left Salon, thinks they are indistinguishable from the GOP.

And then, of course, there is the NYTimes obvious campaign to discredit the Roman Catholic Church by falsely implicating the Pope in some of the abusive priest scandals.  This has been well documented elsewhere, so we are not bothering, but it is atrocious.  It also marks a shift in the religious influence of Christianity inside the Republican party.  Given that Evangelicals kind of self-destructed last time, and as the Democratic party has turned continually anti-religious, the Catholic influence inside the GOP has been rising.  So now they are targets too.

Come to think of it, we may just need a “Religion ADL” that defends us all!  Or maybe instead of an “ambassador,” we’ll need a “czar.”

Back to 2012…

There was serious stuff on the docket last week:

Members of the RNC’s Temporary Delegate Selection Committee are working on a proposal they hope can reform the primary calendar. Their proposal must pass a high hurdle later this summer, when two-thirds of the full RNC must ratify whatever they come up with.

Hotline clearly wants to make this about Romney. Which means they also think he is the presumptive at this point.  But it’s about everybody and it needs to be done.

Pawlenty seemed to have something up his sleeve according to All Headline News.  The Corner found it good, but not all that startling.

The Rick Santorum drums are continuing to beat according to Politics Daily and The Des Moines Resister.  If he gets in, I still do not think it will be to win, it’ll be to garner support for other initiatives.

Somebody is pushing Haley Barbour a bit more.  Haley may be the best fund-raiser in the game, but….

John Thune keeps getting discussion as well, particularly from Chris Cilizza and those that read him.  If Thune is in this time it’s a dress rehearsal or he is running for Veep.

I am so very proud of my alma mater, Butler University, basketball team, and I like Mitch Daniels – but this pushes a point just a little too far -  besides someone much smarter has already tried the metaphor.

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