Article VI Blog

It is time for the next installment in our “Telling The Story” series wherein we try to review the primaries in ‘08 as they relate to Mitt Romney’s candidacy and its relationship to his religion.  We have looked at the basic primary narrative, the bad actors on the left, and the bad actors on the right.  But who were the “good guys” in all this? – Were there any?  What even constitutes a good guy in a situation like this?

We need to start with the proposition that there was an essential prejudice against Romney because of his Mormon faith.  Not all of it is anti-Mormon bigotry either.  For people of the left, Mormons are  viewed, essentially, as über-Christians.  That is to say that Mormons represent all the bad things about religious people in general (”sexual repression,” “lack of creativity,” insert your tired and untrue cliche here) taken way more seriously than even normal religious people take them.  This is the sort of “Oh, my gosh – Mormons really believe this stuff!” category.

For people on the right, at least those who are not predisposed to declare all Mormons headed for hell right now, Mormons are just “weird.”  Even amongst the more reasonable there is just this sense that “Mormons believe strange things.”

The Good Guys

In light of that, can someone be said to be a “good guy” by simply ignoring religion in the campaign altogether?  Back in July of ‘07 we contended that acknowledging the prejudices we just mentioned and then designing our political decisions in avoidance of them amounted to enabling bigotry.  Could simply ignoring the existence of those prejudices, without confronting them, amount to the same thing?  Must prejudice be directly confronted to be done away with?  The answer, frankly, is in how one “ignores” them.

The Campaigners

For purposes of this post, to be considered a “good guy” someone has to have been actively involved in confronting the prejudices and bigotries that were present in the campaign.  That confrontation took two distinctive forms.  The first, and most easily identifiable, were people, particularly religious non-Mormons, who directly supported Mitt Romney’s candidacy.  All such people by example, and many by argument, stood in the face of the prejudices and bigotries, looked them dead in the eye, and said, “No!”  We will call this group “The Campaigners.”

The Principled

The other form of such confrontation is much harder to pin down.  Many people, especially people in positions of religious leadership, do not, as a matter of principle, endorse candidates.  Such people can speak out, however, against religious bigotries.  This is a very sharp edge along which to walk.  To decry bigotry against those who are suffering deep bigotry is, seemingly, to endorse those people.  Thus in 2007-08, those decrying bigotry against Romney took the risk of appearing to endorse Romney, and violating their principles against endorsement.  We will call this group of people “The Principled.”

Many people similarly have a difficult time making the distinction between speaking out against religious bigotry and endorsing the religion that is the object of the bigotry.  I find myself personally often accused of thinking Mormon doctrine is “correct” because of my eventual support of Romney, and my longstanding fight against bigotry aimed at him.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In the interest of preserving my friendships with Mormons, I do not speak of it often, but Mormon doctrine is distinctly aberrant to my way of thinking.  But that fact does not preclude Mormons from a place in the public square.  Should I ever differ with my Mormon friends on a policy matter we will do political battle in the finest traditions of the American political system.  Which means we will argue the merits of the situation, we will not sling accusations of religious mind-muddling at each other.

What Went Wrong?

The list of names we have assembled as “good guys” is impressive, a virtual “Who’s Who” of religious right activism.  And yet clearly they were not nearly as effective as one would hope.  Before we sing their praises, we need to devote a few paragraphs to their failings. This list should have meant an almost automatic win.  What went wrong?

Two factors seem most salient.  Number one, the depth of anti-Mormon prejudice was grossly underestimated.  This is not unreasonable because the mainstays of that prejudice are not typically politically active.  The average political consultant and religion watcher are not going to have this group on their radar.

Which brings us to the second factor: New media.  It gave this “off the radar” group a platform for both voice and organization.  We made the case early in this series that Mike Huckabee was the spoiler for Romney and Huckabee ran, in a very real sense, a “virtual” campaign.  Operating practically without budget and with a grassroots organization to-speak-of only in Iowa, Huckabee relied heavily on the Internet.   We have previously discussed the heinous nature of comments that found their way to the Huckster’s official campaign web site.  That web site is now gone, and what remains is “unofficial,” but when you combine it with the anti-establishment sentiment that has come to the fore at formerly great conservative sites like Free Republic and Red State, it is clear that the Republican party in general, and Mitt Romney in particular, need to formulate an effective, highly active, and well-funded new media operation, or else the party runs the risk of being rendered ineffective, or – more likely -  hostage to its own extremes, which is the situation the Democrats now find themselves in.

So, who are the “good guys?”  We’ll look at them in the groups we previously defined.

Some of the Campaigners

Hugh Hewitt - Do we really need to talk about Hugh Hewitt on this blog?  He’s why Lowell and I are here and his encouragement of and friendship with us is the base on which we stood when we started.  Hugh wrote THE book on the Romney/religion issue (we interviewed Hugh on the release of that book here) as well as being downright prophetic in another book about the role new media would play in politics generally.  Hugh did C-Span on the issues at hand.

Hugh has said in speeches we have heard that he underestimated the anti-Mormon forces that came into play in the campaign.  He had thought that those forces were far enough removed from the mainstream that they would be relegated to a sideshow for the press.  Perhaps by the time he got to this issue, he had forgotten the lessons of his prophetic book on blogging, which had come out several years earlier?  But regardless of having missed that call to some extent, Hugh more than almost anyone else saw the issue of religion as it related to the Romney campaign.

We stretch things a bit in calling Hugh a “campaigner.”  He did not formally endorse a candidate until it was time for him to cast his own vote in the California primary, via absentee ballot, several weeks before Super Tuesday.  Hugh was also the primary example of fighting the prejudice without necessarily endorsing the candidate.  Which brings up an interesting issue.  Virtually none of Talk Radio endorsed in the primaries.  They refrain from doing so for practical reasons.  They want all the candidates to appear on their shows throughout the campaign; if they endorse, they run the risk of alienating and losing the interview(s).  Yet, on the day before Super Tuesday almost all of conservative Talk Radio sounded dangerously close to endorsing Romney – Bill Bennett – Laura Ingraham – Sean Hannity – Dennis Prager – even Rush Limbaugh himself – not to mention the hundred of others out there with local or smaller audiences – all emphasized with great zeal the advantages of Romney over McCain.

Talk Radio walks a fine line between information and activism and one wonders what the future holds in terms of endorsements for this bunch.  Formal endorsements earlier in the game could have made a huge difference in the outcome.  In the new media age of niche marketing, endorsements might not be as alienating as typically thought.  Certainly they could be more active in fighting the prejudice without endorsing the candidate.

In Talk Radio, Hugh Hewitt led the way regarding this issue.

“Evangelicals for Mitt” – David and Nancy French and Charles Mitchell ran this aptly named blog and frankly garnered the lion’s share of the “whom to call when you want to write a story” action as the MSM tried to cover the issue.  As such they probably had the largest profile, other than the aforementioned Hugh Hewitt, on this issue.  David French as a regular contributor to National Review had a particularly high profile, only enhanced by his service in Iraq during a significant portion of the campaign.  We did an interview with David and Nancy that was never published due to any number of failures on our part.

What was most fascinating to watch was that they covered the campaign largely as any normal  political blog would.  They freely acknowledged that Mormons were quite different in their beliefs than traditional Christians and argued a “big so what.”  Then they went about covering the campaign.  In some ways it was a very different approach than the one we took here, but to analyze that in depth would definitely take us into the tall grass and outside the main thrust of this piece.

What matters most, though, is that there were few of us in the new media that tackled this issue head on and EFM was one of the few and one of the effective.  As we have said, new media mattered a lot on this issue.  If will be interesting to watch New Media’s role as things move forward.  EFM as a site is still occasionally active, and we hope it will become increasingly so.  The name alone is worth gold.  It would be great to see it become the kind of on-line community center that we saw develop in the anti-Mormon forces.

Mark DeMoss – When it comes to public relations among Christian organizations and in Evangelical circles, Mark DeMoss is THE MAN.  His DeMoss Group handles the PR for everything from PromiseKeepers to Franklin Graham’s Christmas Gift Child operation.  Mark went to Mitt Romney early in the process and told him, as Mark describes it in our interview with him:

I said, “I’d like to help you.  I’m not a political consultant but I do know this evangelical world pretty well.  So, I would like to help you.  And secondly, I am not for hire.  You can’t pay me.  Now or ever.”  And that was a beginning of a friendship and a respect that we have for each other now.

Mark’s initial action was to set up a meeting for Romney with a number of highly placed and influential Evangelical leaders.  Then throughout the campaign Mark served to make introductions, provide advice, and do whatever else he could to help Mitt Romney get elected.  Mark was a “campaigner” for Romney in the truest sense of the word and he stood on the front lines of the campaign in the Evangelical world.  Mark was very succinct when he said (again in our interview with him):

I think this has really become a passion of mine of late, and that is, what got me interested in this particular man to begin with was this conventional wisdom that actually a national religion reporter posed to me, a year and a half ago and that was in the form of a question:  Did I think evangelicals could ever support a Mormon?  Or did I think a candidate’s being Mormon would automatically disqualify him from considerations by evangelicals?

And that really bothered me.  That whole mindset troubled me.  So I began to look into Mitt Romney and his life and his record and everything I could find out about him.  And I finally reached this conclusion, and that was, to ask whether I could support a Mormon is the wrong question.  I think the question should be: Could I support this Mormon, this particular Mormon.

That about sums it up as well as it can be summed up.

Wayne Grudem – is a highly noted and influential Evangelical Theologian.   He came as perhaps the most significant of traditional Christian endorsements that came Mitt Romney’s way around the fall of ‘07 Values Voter Summit.   (Some of the links in that piece are broken, you can hear Hugh Hewitt’s interview with him, if you are a “Hughinverse” subscriber, here.)  Grudem matters more than many of the other endorsement precisely because he was not a “leader” in the political or ecclesiastical sense, but because he was a theologian.

When people talk about the differences between Mormons and traditional Christians it always ends up focusing on the theology, because frankly, that is the only significant difference.  Grudem’s endorsement said almost nothing about theology and a lot about political and organizational savvy and a lot about values  – placing theology in a proper perspective, something only a  theologian can do, when it comes to electing presidents.

The fact that Grudem’s endorsement, along with so many others, did nothing to really move polls, or even the straw poll at the Values Voters Summit, remains one of the more fascinating facts of that campaign.  It says, at least in part, that the Evangelical world can be divided into a couple of distinct groups – those that use religion as a political tool and those that use politics as a religious tool.  For the former group, a proper understanding of the place of theology did not matter, what mattered was being able to use theology as a tool to help their candidate or eliminate one they do not like.  For the latter group, theology was placed in its proper perspective and did not matter much as the campaign proceeded.

In the category of “might have beens,” it would have been great to see someone like Grudem enter into the countless debates about “what Mormons believe” that occurred around the Internet, or at least have his work up earlier and an army of people quoting it in those discussion.  The recurring mantra, “Yes, but this theologian says it is immaterial as to whom to vote for,” could have had an interesting effect.

But we get a bit ahead of ourselves.  Evangelical leadership, particularly political leadership, is examined in detail and pretty much as a group in our next entry in the list of “good guys.”

Jay Sekulow/James Bopp/Gary Marx – The campaign’s Faith and Values Steering Committee – As we have eluded to, Romney was backed by most of the big names in Christian political activism.  They coalesced into his campaign’s “Faith and Values Steering Committee.”   (Please note that link is to leftie coverage of the formation of the committee – a fact to which we will return in a moment.)  Heading the group were the three names just cited: Jay Sekulow,  Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice; Gary Marx, Executive Director of the Judicial Conformation Network; and James Bopp, probably the preeminent anti-abortion attorney in the nation.  Also on the committee were names like Lou Sheldon, Matt Spaulding, Barbara Comstock and groups like the Alliance Defense Fund and Citizens for Traditional Values were represented.  These people worked hard to elect Mitt Romney and the fact that in the end Romney was not successful has more to do with the state of religious activism in politics than it does with their extraordinary efforts.

There are three things to note about this group, aside from their outstanding credentials.  First, they are lawyers or judicially active, not necessarily legislatively active.  Secondly, they garnered little press save from the lefties, as we noted above.  Finally, they did not bring much in the way of grassroots Evangelicalism along with them.  This is worthy of a bit of discussion.

The fact of the matter is that most of the “action” with regards to the erosion of traditional values in the society is judicial in nature, Roe v. Wade being the classic example.  In light of sweeping court decisions of this type the legislative and executive branches of the government can do little to change things except trim the edges of the law a bit.  Under such circumstances there is little for the average concerned voter to do but send money to guys like these, and the average concerned voter in America likes to do more than write checks.  Romney, in working with this particular group, was typical Romney – he put effectiveness in front of votes, expecting the votes to come when people figured out what he was up to.  This is not something that is going to change – Mitt Romney is who he is.  However, the actions of the current administration are rapidly bringing into focus the value of substance over style, emphasizing that effectiveness is what counts.  Votes should follow.

People don’t like feeling powerless, something most of us feel when confronted with judicial activism.  Thus powerlessness does not sell papers, and people like those on this committee don’t generate a lot of press.  Court rooms are not dramatic places, unless you see the ones in TV fiction and they have little connection to reality.  There are no polls, no big crowds to take pictures of, argument is done in increments too small for the average person to follow without taking notes.  The fact of the matter is Jay Sekulow may have done more to try to limit or eliminate abortion in this nation than any other single person, but very few people that are not insiders know who he is.  Abortion will only even be able to be made illegal in this nation when Roe v Wade is overturned and that means myriad court cases until a sufficient mass is built to attract the Supreme Court’s attention.  That does not really make good ink, or even electrons.

The average Evangelical just does not understand this. They want press, they want heat, they want to march in front of abortion clinics and they want something to happen now.  Thus they gravitate to the agitators with media outlets instead the slow and effective types like those represented on Romney’s committee.

What emerges is an interesting picture.  The “agitators with media outlets” (think James Dobson) did not line up behind Romney because they feared backlash from their constituencies due to the Mormon thing.  This bunch did line up behind him because they knew his effectiveness and they knew it was the best path to actually getting things done.

There is a political circle here that needs to be broken somehow.  Either Evangelicals need to learn where real effectiveness lies or Romney has got to find a way to attract at least one of the loudmouths.  Better, maybe the loudmouths need to educate their audiences on where genuine change can be made.   This problem does not just apply to Romney; virtually any politician that wants to be effective on these issues faces the same political conundrum.  Romney’s conundrum is complicated by his Mormon faith, but the fundamental misunderstanding of the legal situation with regards to many social issue remains.

Frankly, this is where new media can have the best positive effect in terms of a potential future Romney run.  As new media gave the bigoted a place to organize, so it can the truly effective.  If I am a Romney political adviser, the Faith and Values Committee of a future campaign is going to have a huge new media presence.

National Review and NRO – While a diverse group, the heart of National Review is Roman Catholic.  Their endorsement of Romney should have been a much bigger deal to the election than it ended up being – a fact that illustrates that the Mormon issue is, in some ways, less about “being Mormon” and more about “not being Evangelical.”  This endorsement just did not move the polls much.  It likely reflects that Evangelicals were not interested in who was best, but who was most like them.   Since the editors of NR are not like them either, they ignored.

It would be very interesting to see how things would have worked were there not a candidate in the race who was so much “like them.”  Under such circumstances would Evangelicals have gravitated towards Romney?  My thinking is not likely – they would have stayed home.  Prior to the emergence of the Huckster that seemed to be the handwriting on the wall.  Now, that could very well have resulted in a primary victory for Romney, but would not have boded well for the general.

In its various online outlets NR covered the religion question to an extent but tended towards straightforward reporting and political analysis.  With a few notable exceptions they did not argue its merits or lack thereof.  This author would have very much liked to have see the formidable intellectual talent that resides there address the issue in deep detail.  But they did fight hard for the Romney candidacy and they did so with a largely religious audience.

John Mark Reynolds – Dr. Reynolds heads the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University.  In August 2006 he published at his blog what has become the classic apologia for an evangelical Christian voting for a Mormon.  He allowed us to reprint that piece in May of 2007.  He continues to reassert and defend the arguments he put forth then in any venue available to him where the issue arises today.

On the intellectual level JMR did most of the heavy lifting for the issue of Romney and religion during the entire campaign.  He was in early and he worked hard.  He has not gotten the credit he deserved for a couple of reasons.  For one, those opposed to Romney on religious grounds are generally not of an intellectual bent.  (There are notable exceptions.)  Secondly, since most of the real grunt work of the issue happened in the virtual netherworld of blog post comments, etc., it does not lend itself to the kind of extensive reasoning Dr. Reynold brought to the fore.

Reynold’s work was largely complete before Grudem’s endorsement, which garnered much more attention.  Grudem is a theologian and Reynolds a philosopher, which also made a big difference in who attracted attention.  But Reynolds work had a “real world” quality to it that should have made it much more effective than it was.  Once again testament to the fact that prejudice is generally about the absence of reason.

Also, of course, it is testament to the fact that the New Media activity on this issues fell well short of what was needed that Reynold’s work did not spread farther.  Reynold’s work should have been linked, reprinted, discussed and commented upon throughout the online world.   Romney supporters need to get active across the Internet.  See our online activism page for what YOU can do.

Some of the Principled

Richard Land – Dr. Land is essentially the political face of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the biggest denomination in America today.  As a matter of course Dr. Land does not endorse candidates.  Therefore he never said “vote for Mitt Romney.”  In fact, if one were to look at the uncountable times he was quoted in the press on the issue of Romney’s faith, one would suspect he opposed Romney on religious basis.  But that was just the press at work.  Dr. Land speaks extensively on the issue in the Article VI movie, and that is the only place we saw him quoted at sufficient length to know that he in fact thought it would be fine to vote for Mitt Romney.  It should also be noted that we never attended a Romney event of national scope where Dr. Land was not present.  In fact the photo that appears here is one that Lowell took of Dr. Land at Romney’s “Faith in America” speech in December of 2007.

Dr. Land did suffer from “theology first” syndrome and whenever he did say it was OK for a Baptist to vote for a Mormon, he lead with the observation that Mormons are heterodox – although he usually used stronger terminology than that.  This, frankly, is why he was so often misrepresented by a press eager to show a problem with Romney and religion.  The quotations never extended beyond the heterodox point, even though Dr. Land routinely went on to put that observation in a broader context.

It would be very interesting to interview Dr. Land at this point and see if he might not adjust how he makes comments in the future, should Romney elect to run again.  It would be fascinating to have a discussion with him not on Romney per se, but on religious bias generally and the role of religion in the public square.

Regardless of this singular weakness, Dr. Land supported Mitt Romney’s candidacy as best as the constraints of his position would allow him too.  Even if his presentation was not perfectly honed, Dr. Land did stand for the right of an American of minority faith to stand for election and perhaps win.  And for that he is one of the good guys.

Charles Chaput – Like Richard Land, Roman Catholic Archbishop (Denver) Charles Chaput does not do candidate endorsements.  But he is probably the most politically visible and active of all the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States, and he is staunchly conservative.  He was one of the first and most extensive interviews Hugh Hewitt went after when he did his Romney book.

Funny, he did not get much press after that.  Probably because he is so identifiably conservative.  When it came to Roman Catholic comment, the press tended to turn to the late Father Richard John Neuhaus who is a bit more politically moderate, and far more “theology first.”

Regardless, Archbishop Chaput’s comments in the Hewitt book, and his few press comments later in the campaign were right on.  One would think that Roman Catholics, with their long history of suffering similar political bias in America, would have a well formed and unified view of such things.  But the divide between Neuhaus and Chaput demonstrates most likely is that the Roman Catholic church does not have a unified view on much of anything.

A hypothetical Romney campaign cannot stand “the principled” up because such people do not do endorsement and do not wish to be perceived as Romney, or any other candidate, partisans.  What is a more interesting question is why the cause of anti-religious political bias in politics has not become a movement unto itself.  There is such a clear bias from the left against any religious voice in politics that one would think it would become a cause célèbre amongst the religiously motivated and politically active.  Any such movement would have to defend all religion, not just its own.  And therein, I think lies the problem.  The Lands and Chaputs of the world are far more rare than the people who are interested only in protecting their own religion.  Such a movement just cannot seem to get any traction.

As I review this list of “good guys,” I am heartened.  Religion was indeed problematic for Romney 2008, but this list of people gives one hope.  They are the smart people – not because they supported Romney directly or indirectly – but because they are the people that do politics, or comment upon it regularly.  They are leaders and opinion makers.  Such talent and ability may not have the instantaneous gratification of pop cultural impact, but it seems to always prevail in the long run.

As the political ground is shifting under our feet,  as those of us who are religiously motivated and politically active find ourselves increasingly “on the outs,” substance will begin to matter more than flash, and this is a group of much substance.  It gives one hope that regardless of what decision Mitt Romney comes to, there is a good conservative future for America.  People like this cannot help but make it happen.

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As we continue Telling The Story of Romney, religion and Campaign ‘08, we turn our attention from the battleground shaping attacks that emanated from the left to those that came from the right.  You will recall that in the narrative of how the primaries went down, Huckabee played the role of spoiler, but he could do so only because the ground work had been laid by pundits, commentators and operatives on both sides of the aisle.

The attacks from the left were awful, bigoted things.  By analogy, they were sledge hammers.  They lacked any subtlety.  But then they did not need to – the issue was a win-win for the left.  Divide out the most formidable opponent (Romney), therefore weakening him significantly, while painting the rest of the opposition as closed minded and bigoted.

The story from the right is a very different one.  It is a story of deft strategy, surgical skill, memes that overlapped to become codes, and simple misguided attempts to differentiate too strongly when unity was called for.  With a few notable exceptions, most of the problem on the right was not an attack so much as placing religion and/or religious identity in front of politics.  Most of the problems came not from people who thought Romney’s religion disqualified him, but more from those who just wanted to make sure everyone knew Mormons were not like other Christians (although most such people would not call Mormons “Christian”).  We call this group “religion firsters.”  Probably they never realized that in so doing, they were cutting Romney from the herd, forcing him to have to work so much harder than anyone else to win the electorate’s trust that the task became impossible.

The people that used the religion issue on the right can be divided into four groups.  The first are those that are not necessarily religious bigots, but were not the least bit opposed to using religious bigotry to reach their own political ends.  The second group are essentially the same but their ends were/are other than political.  The third group are misguided “religion firsters.”  The final group are the outright religious bigots – there were far less of them on the right than there were on the left.

The reasons the attacks from the right could be far more subtle were twofold.  Firstly, “sledge hammer” attacks would be destructive of the entire right – as they attempted to be from the left.  This is an effort to stay within the boundaries of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment.  Secondly, because the strategic goals of those attacking from the right were very different than the goals of the left, different attacks were called for.  In most cases people attacking Romney for his religion from the right were not doing so in an effort to stop Romney (though undoubtedly some were) as they were in it to try and bolster themselves in some fashion, as a candidate or otherwise.

Perhaps the biggest problem with many of the attacks from the right was the unwillingness of people to examine carefully what role religion may have played in forming an argument that was overtly non-religious.  The classic example of this is the “flip-flop” charge that played against Romney almost endlessly.  Some of this was rooted in the left wanting to use it against the right in general since it had worked so effectively against John Kerry in 2004.  But something had to be there to make it take hold.  It never really meant much against John Kerry until the now infamous “I actually voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it” sound bite lent an amazing reality to the charge.   Politicians not only do, but in some circumstances must, change positions.  If they didn’t they would not be reading, learning or responding to changing conditions in the nation – a recipe for one-term service.  Changing positions is only a problem if it plays on a deeper mistrust of the candidate.  In Kerry’s case he sounded like a fool  (John Kerry is not foolish by the way, wrong, but not foolish – that is just how he sounded) that could not make up is mind.  In Romney’s case it played on the inherent distrust that many people have for Mormons – a distrust evidenced in the past violently, and now politically.  That distrust got only occasional overt mention (Huckabee’s quip to the NYTimes in Iowa and Joel Belz’ piece we examine below) but that was enough to remind people that “Mormons were not necessarily trustworthy.”  Thus a flip-flop charge resonated where it otherwise might have been written off as standard political banter.

The word that has most described Romney’s failures in the last cycle in the various postmortems is “inauthentic.”  This too is a word that resonates more with an image of the man than the man himself, and that image is formed, as we documented in the last post in this series, by a press that relentlessly made sure the thing most associated with Mitt Romney was his Mormon faith.  “Inauthentic” is a good word – it covers the flip-flop thing – it covers the “too perfect” charge – and it all resonates because people just have a hard time believing that Mormons are really the way they are.  (Aging myself, I have a large collection of Donny and Marie jokes that date back to the ’70’s and all play on the apparent “inauthenticity” of that family.)

How much do those stereotypes play into people’s voting?  Well, only the individual can answer ultimately.  However, There was one study out of Vanderbilt University that indicated they were important.

Bias against Mitt Romney’s religion is one of the reasons that the tag “flip-flopper” sticks with the former Massachusetts governor but not his Republican opponents, according to Vanderbilt political scientist John Geer. “There is no question that Romney has changed his positions on some issues, but so have some of the other candidates,” Geer said. “Why does the label stick to Romney but not his opponents? At least some of the answer lies in Romney’s Mormon beliefs.”

Geer and colleagues Brett Benson of Vanderbilt and Jennifer Merolla of Claremont Graduate University designed an Internet survey to assess bias against Mormons, how best to combat it and its potential impact on the nomination process and general election campaign.

“We find that of those who accuse Romney of flip-flopping, many admit it is Romney’s Mormonism and not his flip-flopping that is the real issue,” Benson said. “Our survey shows that 26 percent of those who accuse Romney of flip-flopping also indicate that Mormonism, not flip-flopping, is their problem with Romney.” Benson noted that the pattern is especially strong for conservative Evangelicals. According to the poll, 57 percent of them have a bias against Mormons.

Twenty-six percent is more than enough to alter the results of a primary.  We torture ourselves when we want to vote against an African-American candidate; we take to sackcloth and ashes to make sure we vote for, or against, the man, not the color.  Yet when it came to the Mormon candidate, it just seems like too many were unwilling to enter into those same levels of self-examination.  Thus the quip, or even the mere distinction, could be the weapon of choice.  And sadly, it worked with at least enough people to prevent Romney from winning the 2008 Republican nomination.

So, who were the bigots, who were the quippers and who were the distinguishers?

Religious Bigots

Genuine bigotry was actually pretty hard to come by on the right hand side of the aisle.  But there were a few –

John McCain’s mother – They only let her out in public once, but when they did, she embarrassed her son to the point where he had to deny her viewpoint immediately, on live television.  You can see the video at the link preceding – it was on Hardball with Chris Matthews.  This incident disappeared as fast as it appeared and in the end it was of little consequence.  McCain’s immediate move away from the comment was an astute political maneuver, and kept this from becoming a major issue.   Nonetheless, it was a brief and revealing glimpse into the world of anti-Mormon bigotry that is out there.

Joel Belz – Mr. Belz, founder and Editor -in-Chief of the influential evangelical magazine, World, put to pen the bigotries that inhabit the hearts of at least enough to affect the outcome of a national election.  His now infamous op-ed appeared in November of ‘07 (subscription required)  The heart of his argument is truly troubling:

It’s not a trivial matter that Mormonism, as a cultic movement, has a bad reputation when it comes to getting its own story straight. Check out the public record, if you will, including fairly recent interviews with Mormon officials in venues like Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, and Newsweek. Do these officials hold to the fantastical 1827 golden tablets of Mormon founder Joseph Smith—or not? Well, they seem to say: We believe it when we want to, and we don’t when it’s less convenient. Where Mormonism isn’t shrouded in deliberate secrecy, it is covered with confusion.

So when folks tell me they’re satisfied that Mitt Romney won’t try to drag his Mormonism into his politics, and that he would never ever impose his theology on the American people, I have to worry whether that’s exactly what he’s already done. When, in a relatively short space of time, he seems to be on both sides of the same issue—and when such a deviously confusing approach seems to be consistent with his faith rather than counter to it—that sets off alarm bells for me.

Only a few weeks ago, I sat a dozen feet from Romney as he compellingly spelled out his convictions and credentials. He was winsome and persuasive. On the surface, he said almost everything I want to hear my candidate say. On the issues that matter (except for choice in education), he was as convincing as any politician I’ve heard in recent years.

But still.

More than anything, I want a president who tells the truth. And I worry deeply when people are overly ready to believe a man whose religious upbringing, of all things, suggests that the truth is a negotiable commodity.

In other words, “Mormons lie.”  We have refuted this argument time and again on this blog and will not endeavor to do so again in this piece, it’s purpose is different.  What we have not examined was Belz attempt, in the next issue of his magazine to justify his very below the belt attack.

Indeed, his very thoughtfulness makes me want to be very careful when I raise the question: How does a person’s Mormonism affect his or her possible role as president of the United States?

But just because I’m obliged to ask the question carefully doesn’t mean I’m out of bounds in asking the question. I applauded when Romney stressed: “[Some] would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do.” Nor should he; that is part of his personal character.

But this integral and holistic nature of the person is also exactly what makes it not just right, but necessary, to ask—even in detail—just how what this man believes “religiously” affects all the rest of his behavior.

So it’s not bigotry for Americans to ask of Mormons they know: “Why so secretive? Why the necessity to hide so much?” One of the hallmarks of the historic Christian faith—as opposed to some of the cults it has spun off—is its eagerness to say: “Check us out! We may have embarrassing moments in our past, but we have no secrets.” We’re like Jesus saying to Thomas: “Feel the nail prints. Thrust your hand into my side!”

I am going to sound very much like a civil rights attorney here, but this justification for bigotry is bigoted on its face.  It presumes a view of religion and its effects on a person and their character that is distinctly evangelical, and one that another religion may not, and many do not, share.  I will not speak for Mormons on this matter, that is for them to do, but what I will say is that we cannot measure another religion by our religion’s yardstick.  Needless to say, no religion other than our own will “measure up” under such circumstance.

That, frankly, is the entire point.  We have to take people as they present themselves, unless we can show them to be liars in fact.  Presumptions, based on other factors including religion, are the definition of prejudice.  No other word but bigotry can possible apply.  What you see here, placed into stark words and print is the intellectual roots that underlie the results of the Vanderbilt study cited above.  Such logic will inevitably lead us down a path where no one but ourselves, since only ourselves can possible “measure up,” will be suitable for office.  That’s something beyond libertarianism – that’s chaos.

Using Religious Bigotry To Achieve Political Ends

Cindi Mosteller – Ms. Mosteller was a McCain person in 2000, and her allegiances were unclear when she launched her religion attack on Romney in September of 2006, but she ended up working formally for Fred Thompson.  By the time Romney left the election, this tiny vignette seemed tame by comparison, but at the time it was big news around here.

At an executive meeting of the South Carolina Republican Committee (a private affair, we must note), Mosteller “cornered” Romney about polygamy and  Mormon attitudes on race.  There are two things to note in the confrontation itself.  First, somehow, this exchange, which occurred in the context of a private meeting, made it into the political press, and Mosteller was clearly the one that took it there; she is quoted directly.  Secondly, her “issues” with Mormonism were rooted decades, even centuries, in the Mormon past.

When you combine that with Mosteller’s past of being a paid staffer for McCain and that she ended up being one for Thompson in the ‘08 cycle, it seems clear that her objective here was either to back her presumed future employer (McCain) or alternately establish her credentials with some candidate other than Romney.  Either way, she wanted headlines and was not afraid to use the “Mormon issue,” even if extraordinarily ignorantly so, to get them.

She was heard from a few times after that as things proceeded, but by that time, she had little impact – everybody had figured out her game.  What she did do, however, was illustrate that the effectiveness of the Mormon issue played not in somehow proven Mormonism to be a problem for Romney, but rather by simply using it as a wedge between Romney and others.  She did not really “lay a glove” on Romney, but she did make it known, in a manner similar to Huckbee’s NYTimes comment before the caucus’, that it was OK to be suspicious.

Using Religious Bigotry to Achieve Other Ends

Mike Huckabee – It was quite difficult to decide whether to put Huckabee into this category or the one to achieve political ends.  In the end the distinction comes down to how seriously one thinks he takes his own candidacy.  Huckabee’s behavior in the 2008 primary clearly indicated that he was after something other than the nomination.  What it was  we may never know, and whatever it is might indeed be political in nature, but given that he ended up on TV and not in politics in any direct fashion, and that he seems to put his personal income in front of political goals, this category seems most appropriate.

We have thoroughly documented Huckabee and his shenanigans in the post linked by his name here.  But one thing we have not discussed is the tolerance his campaign’s web site showed for comments that were personal, vindictive, bigoted, hate filled, not to mention discriminatory.  All traces of the web site have disappeared.  We cannot find even a Google cache.  But you can get a basic idea if you go to web sites like this one.  This site features pieces written by notable Huckabee supporters – so you do the math.

That the world has haters in it is undeniable.  That presidential candidates of any stripe tolerate such people on their web sites in unconscionable.  Suppose the Obama site tolerated comments about how “Whitey just wants to keep the black folk down,” or McCain’s site had comments like, “We can’t let a n&^%%$ in the White House (unless he’s serving coffee.)”  How long before the press crushed either of those candidates?

I’ll even bet a few such comments made it into the approval queues of those sites, but no one let them through – we’d have heard about it.  Huckabee, of course, talks about his lack of staff for such things as comment approval, which only proves the point that he had no chance of winning and was in the race for other reasons.  Any candidate that had an actual shot would have had sufficient staff for such an exercise.

But enough about the Huckster, he was far from the only bad actor.

Jim Dobson – Our conclusion that this is the category in which to discuss James Dobson was not an easy one to reach.  During Campaign ‘08, Dobson was the single most-heard voice in Evangelicalism generally.  He may be the Evangelical leader we have discussed the most on this blog.  But it must be remembered that he is/was neither pastor nor political leader – his credentials were as a psychologist and he made his living as a radio host.

Dobson has flirted with “making friends” with Mormons for a long time, dating to before the last election cycle and they have continued since. And they have usually resulted in Dobson getting beaten up by his listeners/constituency/audience – whatever word seems most appropriate.  Dobson never actually said anything negative about Mitt Romney, nor did he ever say one should not vote for a Mormon, but he never endorsed Romney except by process of elimination (he said “never” about both McCain and Giuliani).  When you combine these facts with things we have heard on the grapevine from un-nameable sources and second and third hand, it seems obvious that Dobson feared a listener revolt if he actually came out for Romney.  This fact, more than anything else, seems to have motivated his prevaricating, hot and cold, non-leadership.

It could be asked, “How was this ‘using’ bigotry?”  Simple – he refused to stand against it.  Based on all I have heard, I presume that Dobson voted for Romney in the privacy of the voting booth, but that is just a presumption.  It is understandable in his position if he did not want to endorse anyone, but he did do negative endorsements (which he later had to renounce as McCain was the nominee) which creates a significant bit of cognitive dissonance.  Moreover, one can stand against a bigoted or biased vote without endorsing.  He did not even attempt to do this.  He was apparently more loyal to his audience than he was his political conscience.  He was willing to stand with the bias and bigotry in order to keep his audience size and reach.  (Lowell interjects: I would say Dobson was mostly loyal to his own self-interest.)

It is no wonder that Dobson has resigned the Focus on the Family ministry in the wake of the conservative disaster that was Election 2008.   (It is possible the revolt he most feared has occurred anyway, in which case we are seeing the rabid self-segregate as they have done away with the the largest voice in Evangelical history.) Dobson failed to lead, and in so doing he condoned and coddled the bigots out there.  I don’t know James Dobson personally, he is apparently a good man, but in this instance he made a terrible mistake.  He has apparently tried to make amends in comments related to Proposition 8, and he is to be applauded for that.  He can be forgiven, but what happened in the campaign is fact, undeniable, unchangeable fact.

Religion Firsters

People use presidential campaigns as a template on which they impress all sorts of things.  The wide national discussion they engender, the massive media coverage – in other words the buzz they generate – creates a circumstance in which people bring many agendas into the mix that have little or nothing to do with electing a president.  I mean the resemblance between Pepsi’s new logo and Obama’s campaign graphics is not coincidental.

And so many Evangelicals came to the candidacy of Mitt Romney and before they discussed Romney’s merits as a candidate, his stance on the issues, his leadership skills, his impeccable business credentials, his term as governor of Massachusetts, they had to make sure, in no uncertain terms that anyone paying any attention knew that Mormons were not like them.  In many cases they had to make sure the term “Christian” was not applied to Mormons.  In other words it was a religious feud imprinted on the presidential campaign.

The problem, of course, is that with that imprinted agenda, they never really got to the meat of the matter:  the whole electing the president thing.  I grew up in a farm state – Indiana.  The State Fair was and is a huge deal there.  But I also grew up in the city of Indianapolis, and as such, I thought the midway was the reason for the fair and the ag exhibits were the sideshow.

The people we are going to discuss here are people that let the sideshow become the main event.  It played out in many different ways and on different levels.   Three prevalent names from the ranks of talk radio come to mind when we discuss this category.

Al Mohler – Mohler is the President of one of the leading Baptist seminaries in the nation and he hosts a radio talk show.  Way back in September of ‘06 he hosted a panel discussion on the “Mormon Question.”  We examined it in great detail at the time.  There are two real problems with the approach taken on his show.  One was the name calling that occurred in the context of the discussion.  Words like “cult” and “aberration” were thrown around like candy from a parade float.  Mohler remained inconclusive on voting for a Mormon throughout the campaign, but when words like that, with their extraordinary negative connotations,  are heavily in evidence such apparent “neutrality” seems little more than a posture.

The other problem with Mohler’s approach was his concern that electing Romney would “mainstream” Mormonism.  Mohler’s seminary is in Kentucky, and his concern about “mainstreaming” certainly confirms that.  Out here in the “Jello Belt,” Mormons are pretty mainstream already.  It also forces me to wonder if Mohler has ever flown Jet Blue or stayed in a Marriott?

The problem with both of these points are that they are religious concerns, not political ones.    Rather than being concerned about who is equipped to lead the nation, whose stances on the issues will come closest to representing their own, they are concerned about which religion “wins” the battle of religions.  When you break it down that way, you come to see that such completely defies the basis on which America was founded.  There is real religious conflict between Baptists, and most of orthodox Christianity, and Mormons.  That is as it should be, but that conflict cannot and will not be won based on who is elected President of the United States, to think that it could be is to imprint the religious conflict onto the political one – and it means losing the political one.

Frank Pastore - By all accounts, former baseball great and now Christian talk radio guy Frank Pastore is a really nice person.  But when it came to discussing Romney, religion, and the election he had to “hold his nose” to discuss Romney in anything like acceptable terms.  To my way of thinking, the most egregious example of Pastore’s rhetoric here was in December of ‘07 when he implied that I — not yours truly, mind you, just any orthodox Christian who would enthusiastically back Romney — was a less devoted Christian than he was because of an acceptance of Romney in the political arena.

It is very hard to sort Pastore’s religious concerns from his political ones.  Consider this paragraph from that December ‘07 time frame:

Like I said, I’ll vote for Romney—if I have to—since it will mean keeping a Democrat out of the White House. But should he become president, I, along with millions of other Christians, will expose each and every attempt by the LDS church to advance their false religion into the world, for we are aware of the potential spiritual challenges of having a Mormon in the White House.

My initial response to such thinking was, and remains, “Did the presidency of George W. Bush cause the United Methodist Church to mount some sort of religious offensive?”  And on a more religious level, when the first Christians and early church thrived under a persecuting pagan Roman Emperor, to be concerned about an elected democratic official of a different religion harming one’s faith is to have a very weak faith indeed.  Even today the Christian church thrives under regimes that routinely persecute it.  I have a hard time understanding what “potential spiritual challenges” a Romney, or any other Mormon, presidency would present.

Kevin McCollough – We had what ended up being a pretty cordial exchange with radio talker Kevin McCollough.  You can read all about it by following the links from the link naming him.  McCollough is the classic and, frankly, least harmful of the “religion firsters.”  He just wanted to make the point that “Mormons are not Christians.”  Now, in the end, that is a theological question, not a political one.  But when it is asked, how it is asked, and other contextual concerns can give it enormous political impact.  Such was our concern when McCollough brought it up, and it is the problem with religion first in politics generally.

Mormons are religiously quite distinct from more orthodox forms of Christianity.  However, given the breadth of expressions, theologically, institutionally, and culturally that is generally considered within orthodox Christianity they are not nearly so far off the mark as any particular expression might want to make you believe.  One traditional Christian group might pick on one thing, and another might pick on something different, but taken as a whole, you can probably find someone inside traditional Christianity that is only one step away from the Mormon expression, even if they may be miles from other traditionally Christian expressions in that area.

But that is not really the point here; the point is, when that is what you choose to discuss, when the question really is who to vote for as POTUS, you are one, changing the subject and two, emphasizing differences when similarities are more important.  If one thinks that a Mormon candidate is a good, even great candidate for the job, when religion is not considered, to “worry out loud” about religion is to essentially look for a reason not to vote for a highly qualified candidate.  And even if you arrive at the conclusion that you will vote for him/her, your public worries have by that time given many the opportunity to opt out.

In the end, that’s the problem with all the “religion firsters” we have discussed here – its creating difference where likeness is called for.  There is one simple question when deciding whom to vote for – who will best advance my concerns.   All other questions are important and meaningful and maybe even religiously significant, but they are secondary in the political arena.

And The Rest…

In our summary here, we have just hit the highlights of what came out of the right wing side of the aisle.  We have not mentioned people like Gary Glenn, or the recently appearing, but undoubtedly in the background then, Conservatives For Truth.  We engaged with many during the course of the campaign, often not because we wanted to convince them (we knew we couldn’t) but because we thought the discussion would help us sharpen our arguments on a particular point, or simply formulate them to begin with.  But here we have tried to limit our discussion to encounters and attacks that had national significance and drew national press.

It is hard to judge the impact of these regional and local skirmishes with The Question.  In the end it may be on them, and not the big national things that an election really turns, but such is very hard to tell from this perspective and available data.

In Sum…

When it came to religiously-based attacks from the right that hurt the Romney ‘08 campaign, it was something of a perfect storm scenario – death by a thousand cuts.  For some this was strategic, but for most it was simply an accident of the pursuit of other agendas, some personal, some religious, and some political – but few were in actual open opposition.

All these factors will exist in Campaign ‘12 as well, should Romney elect to run.  But this observer thinks their effects will be radically different, not because of any change in the people, but because three years of a radically left-wing administration and at least two years of a radically left wing Congress.  There is nothing like watching the opposition work to place things in proper perspective.

After being out of power for several years, the differences between Mormon and Evangelical theology will not be nearly so important. Should Obamacare become a reality, we will be far more concerned with turning back as much of it as we can as opposed to making sure Mormons do not gain a greater level of “cultural acceptance.”

But a discussion of the future needs to wait for one more post.  We next turn our attention in this series to “the Good Guys.”  Who were those traditional Christians that backed the potential for “A Mormon in The White House?”  We’ll find out in the next post in the Telling The Story series.

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In our last post in the series “Telling the Story” we looked at the chronology of events in the primaries that lead to Mitt Romney’s withdrawal as a candidate for the Republican nomination for POTUS.  In reviewing those events we determined that Mike Huckabee played the role of “spoiler.”  Huckabee employed a strategy that was at best self-serving, and possibly designed specifically to prevent Mitt Romney from winning the nomination.  Unless he becomes far more forthcoming than he has been to date, Mike Huckabee’s reasons for utilizing that strategy will never be wholly apparent.  Nonetheless, we can conclude that religion was an important part of the mix.

But for Huckabee, or his advisers, to devise and execute that strategy the playing field had to be in a certain condition.  A general might call it “shaping the battlefield.”  Of course, in this case, Huckabee did not shape the battlefield so much as devise a strategy that most effectively responded to the existing conditions.   Even so, those conditions played perfectly into using religion as a weapon and nobody was better suited to wield that weapon that Mike Huckabee.

In point of fact, Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith became, as a result of relentless press coverage, the defining characteristic of his effort.  It was discussed and written about in enormous volume, and with incredible repetitiveness, in virtually every news publication in the country.  How it was written about varied significantly based on the viewpoint of the publication in question, but all of them felt compelled to write about it – and then write about it some more.

For the left, in which we will here include the MSM, discussing Romney’s faith was a win-win.  With persons self-identifying as traditional Christians making up a huge segment of the Republican primary vote, discussing Romney’s faith served to: 1) emphasize that Romney was not the same as most Republicans, and 2) paint the picture of most Republicans as close-minded religious non-thinkers.  Romney, because of his extraordinary organizational skills, was widely viewed as the front runner.  The Democrats viewed him as the most formidable candidate they could face in the general election.  It was in their best interest to have anyone other than Romney as the Republican candidate.  By dividing him out, using religion as the wedge, from the “average” Republican they could not help but lessen his chances in an age when identity politics are on the rise.  By painting the average Christian, especially Evangelical Republicans as close-minded and discriminatory, they also lessened the chances of the Republicans generally in the general election.

It should also be remembered that one of the primary tenets of left-leaning thinking is that religion is purely a divisive force in the political arena, and hence should be excluded from any voice in the public square.  If they could create a religious rift inside the conservative movement, it would be evidence greatly strengthening their case that there is no room for the religious in the public square.

In this post, and the one following, we examine the battleground-shaping attacks on Romney as related to his faith.  In this post we examine those attacks as they came from the left.  Our discussion breaks down into two essential threads.  In the first we discuss the “MSM Memes” that took hold and seemed to shape virtually every story written about the matter.  In the second, we examine the most egregious of the hit pieces and commentary that came from the left – naming names and revisiting our debates with the protagonists in the drama as their pieces were published.

The MSM Memes

“Mitt Romney, a Mormon . . . .” Events have clearly demonstrated that the left was right – that at least among some Republicans, Mitt Romney’s religion was divisive.   In our next post, where we discuss the “battleground shaping” attacks that came from the right, we will see that much of the divisiveness did not come from Mormonism, but from traditional (or “creedal” as the Mormons like to say) Christians who felt it important to make sure everyone knew Mormons were not like them.   This meant that the simple mention of Romney’s faith could produce the desired effect.

In April of 2007, an e-mailer to this blog did a simple Google hit count survey and found that the vast majority of articles published on Mitt Romney mentioned his religion.  This compared  to articles about other Republican candidates where their religion was barely mentioned – in the case of McCain only a fraction of a percentage.  The work was done long before anyone took Huckabee seriously so data on him do not exist, but I certainly do not recall anything like the volume of mention Romney “enjoyed,” and Huckabee, after all, is Baptist clergy!

Most pieces did not discuss Romney’s faith directly; rather, they referred to it in passing.  “Mitt Romney, a Mormon . . .” was certainly the most direct and likely frequent formulation.  However, also common were throw away sentences like, “Some doubt Romney can win over the critical Evangelical vote because of his Mormon faith,” or “Romney’s Mormon faith makes his climb extra steep.”  Articles simply discussing poll results or campaign appearances felt it necessary to mention Romney’s faith.   Such was not the case when discussing other candidates, but with Romney it seemed that the word “Mormon” had to appear within a paragraph or two of the first mention of his name.

Most notable of these efforts would be the Newsweek cover story of October 1, 2007.  The cover featured a picture of Romney and over-titled the piece and the magazine, “A Mormon’s Journey.”  The piece itself appeared in the magazine under the far less religiously-identifying title of “Campaign ‘08: The Making of Mitt Romney.”  But of course, it was that cover, which did little but associate Romney and his faith, that appeared on newsstands and in grocery checkouts throughout the nation.

For the millions of Americans who saw it – the vast majority of Americans that do not eat sleep and breathe political writing – this would define what they knew of Mitt Romney – that he was a Mormon.  (As a side commentary, the news weekly is leading the decline of dead tree media and episodes like this make me ever more grateful for that fact.)

“What Mormons Believe . . . .” We were also treated to countless articles attempting to summarize Mormon belief.  And when I say “countless,” I mean I lost count somewhere late in 2006 – my calculator ran out of digits.  I beg your indulgence regarding the lack of linking to exemplary pieces in this section.  There was just too much material to get through to find suitable examples.  There were three characteristics that seemed to mark these pieces.

The first characteristic was that few of them quoted either LDS officialdom or LDS material, and those that did seemed to always make sure and “fact check” those representations against some traditional Christian source.   Let’s set aside for a moment the question of whether one actually believes all that Mormons do or not, it should be remembered that I do not.  Such an approach presumes that Mormons would misrepresent their own beliefs.  Does one “fact check” a Papal encyclical against the president of a Baptist seminary?  When Osama Bin Laden tells us what he believes of Allah, do we run off to the comparative religions department of some university to see if he got it “right?”  When it comes to matters of faith, how can anyone other than the holder of the faith be “the expert?”

The CJCLDS is nothing if not prolific in publishing what it believes.  Just check the references section of this blog.  It is an interesting characteristic of “journalism” that it requires the interview.  Reporters have to talk to somebody.  Book research never seems to be enough to write a journalistic article.  Well, most of the LDS I know tend, when asked what they believe, to point to the various LDS resources.  Those that do talk about it, always preface it with, “What I believe does not necessarily represent the official teaching or belief of the church.”  But traditionally Christian experts in “cults” always seemed just a little too willing to tell the average Mormon what they really do believe.

The second characteristic that marked these pieces was that they tended to emphasize the peripherals of Mormon belief, not its center.  Most religions have a core set of important beliefs and then a large peripheral body of literature that the average believers rarely concerns themselves with, if they are even aware of them.  For Protestants there is glossolalia.  For Roman Catholics there is an enormous body of near ‘mythos’ regarding angels and demonology.  For Jews there is numerology.  For Mormons there are the statements of some early Mormon leaders and the long-abandoned practice of polygamy.  This is not to say that each of these things are not seen as sacred by some adherents of those religions, but it is to say they are not things that enter into the daily lives or even daily practice of those adherents – or at least most of them.  It is also to say that to outsiders these things appear a bit strange.

Yet, when we read stories about Roman Catholics we hear not of angels and demons, unless we are reading a Dan Brown book.  These things do not define the average Roman Catholic.  Nor do beliefs about how the Book of Mormon came to be, or where Jesus appeared define  the average Mormon.  The heart of Mormon belief is a story of sin and redemption, different in detail but not generality, from any of the other western monotheistic religions.  Yet the press, in discussing Mormon belief focus’ not on that primary core, but on the peripheral “oddities.”

The third characteristic of these pieces is that they were often sidebars, or side boxes, to articles that were discussing Romney or some other aspect of the presidential campaign.  Rarely, at least in major outlets, is Mormon belief written about on its own terms.  Rather, it appears in some sort of context, as if they need an “excuse” to discuss it.  This has three effects.  One, given the second characteristic we just discussed, it serves to link those oddities with the primary discussion at hand, so in the case of the ‘08 primaries, it linked Mitt Romney and Mormon “oddities.”  The second thing it does is sort of erase the piece from the record.  Articles are often carefully archived.  Sidebars and snippets are a different thing altogether.  Finally, such short bits can never do justice to the totality of belief for any religion.  It’s a pot shot, not an examination.

There was a classic example of a piece that combined all three of these characteristics.  It was a Newsweek side box from August of 2007 on celestial marriage.  When I went looking for it, I found where this blog linked to it, but when I followed the link it was “dead,” it was in fact a side box, and not an article, and therefore not subject to archiving.  I could not even find it as a cache somewhere.  Thus this piece meets our third criteria.   I frankly cannot recall whether the piece cited official Mormon sources or not, but I do recall it cited traditional Christian experts “interpreting” the ramifications of the doctrine and being quick to point out that Mormons therefore still believe in polygamy.  Thus we meet our first criteria.  And of course, almost by definition, after-life marriage issues are peripheral to he core of a religions doctrine.  There was no examination of anything to do with sin, atonement, behavior in this life – things that affect how a religion functions in the here and now.

The net effect of all these pieces carrying these two memes was to set Mitt Romney apart as some sort of “freak,” or at least a little “weird.”  There is an old joke about women in the south – they use the phrase “bless their heart” as cover for just about any insult imaginable.  “My that’s an ugly baby – bless his heart.”  That seemed to be what the press was trying to do with Romney – act the carnival barker (”Come see the amazing two-headed baby”) but do it in a fashion that at least lacked the appearance of being discriminatory.  And yet, like the blessed ugly baby, that word “ugly” just hangs there.  Of course, they would argue that it was news because most Americans know about Episcopalians and Baptists, but most do not know about Mormons, and it is the press’ job to inform.  If that information had a negative effect, the problem is with the average Christian, not them.  There’s that win-win we talked about early in this post.

In point of fact, Mitt Romney’s faith was hardly news.  Mormons dating all the way back to Joseph Smith have run for president.  If Americans don’t know about Mormons, it is not for lack of information – that is plentiful.  For most of us it is as available as answering a knock at our door politely.  Certainly by the time Iowa got serious the word on Romney’s faith was out there – but then the continuing coverage at that point may be more Huckabee’s fault than the press’ fault.

Hit Pieces and Comments

While the press coverage of Romney’s religion was relentless, the left-leaning punditry was downright mean – in some cases the fact that they are still allowed their positions of influence is a stunning condemnation of the left.  In this section we are going to look at the worst of them.  In most cases there is specific article or piece they wrote that we link to in the boldfaced opening to the paragraphs dedicated to the discussion; in one case, however, it is a body of work.

Amy Sullivan – We are fond of saying that Robert Novak, as presented by Hugh Hewitt, gave us the idea for this blog.  But Novak was not the very first to write on the issue of Romney’s faith.  He certainly was the one who wrote about it the most, and he certainly was the one that wrote about it from “inside sources,” but the honor for the very first piece on the subject belongs to Terry Eastland at the Weekly Standard in June of ‘05.   Eastland’s piece was straightforward political reporting, examining a real issue of consequence to a potential run.  It did not try to fan the flames, just point out that there was an issue.

But the next piece that appeared was Amy Sullivan in Washington Monthly in September of ‘05.  By the time this blog came into being, this piece was water under the bridge so we never examined it in close detail, but Sullivan, a self-described Evangelical liberal, clearly set the mold for the “win-win” left-leaning treatment of the subject that was to come.  Sullivan had an axe to grind with her conservative Christian siblings and was more than wiling to use Romney as the whetting stone.

In point of fact, her treatment of the subject in the piece, and in her subsequent several years of TV panel appearances, belie one of the more important political sub-texts of the campaign.  Mike Huckabee’s populist stance represents the middle ground in the current Evangelical political spectrum – socially conservative, fiscally liberal, and confused on national defense.  There have always been left-leaning Evangelicals, but they have always been relatively quiet.  As press coverage of conservative Evangelicals has risen to the point that the words “conservative” and “evangelical” seemed synonymous, they have grown less and less quiet.  Some say they are responsible for the election of Obama – he does have the numbers in that regard.

Nonetheless, Romney presented these left-leaning Evangelicals with a golden opportunity to paint the right-wing Evangelical siblings in the public eye as  country redneck bumpkins they have always thought them to be.   Rereading Sullivan’s piece, that is the real subtext.  Romney found himself caught in a serious case of Evangelical infighting.

This piece by Sullivan set the mold for much of the reporting that was to come, the “win-win” for lefties.  As such it is worthy of mention here.

Andrew Sullivan – It is virtually impossible to put your finger on a single piece by Andrew Sullivan that is the piece.  Apparently shaping his entire life around that fact that he is gay, Sullivan simply despises religious people in general (unless they unquestioningly accept homosexual practices), but saves a special animus, even before Prop 8, for Mormons, and for Mitt Romney in particular.  And yet he has not strayed from the now tried and true win-win formulation for the left writing about Romney.

It continues even to this day.  Consider this post he wrote in the wake of the recent Values Voters summit:

Alas, the only thing less credible than Mitt Romney as a Christianist is Mitt Romney as a populist.

Note how in that single sentence he manages to slam conservative Christians with the use of his by now patented “Christianist” term, separate Mitt Romney from the general herd of conservative religious folk, and go on to describe Romney as not credible.  The “not credible” charge even resonates with the “Mormons lie” meme that we alluded to in the last post in this series and that we will examine in detail in the next.

Although witty, there is a bile that drips from virtually every word Sullivan writes on the subject that is extremely effective in shaping public opinion, even if it says nothing of substance.  Sullivan’s distaste for conservatives Christians, inclusive of Mormons and Romney, is apparent – but there is no actual engagement in the realm of ideas.   That is sad because Sullivan first rose to wide public notice as a leftie who supported the anti-terrorism actions by the Bush 43 administration.  Sullivan is clearly a very smart man, but when people differ with him on matters concerning his sexual orientation and practice – especially gay marriage– his reason seems simply to leave the building.  Utter contempt takes its place.

If he stopped there, Sullivan’s rhetoric would be understandable, even personally sympathetic – albeit still wrong – but he doesn’t.  By insisting on singling out Mormons and Romney in the fashion he does – not to mention that incredibly ugly term “Christianist” – he descends into the very bigotry he postures so to  oppose.  This clear bigotry, as it became more and more shrill during campaign ‘08, has reduced Sullivan’s importance as a commentator.  But he remains a significant and widely read blogger, although increasingly to a niche market.

Jacob Weisberg – Far and away the most bigoted, nastiest religious attack to come from the left side of the aisle was Jacob Weisberg’s December 2006 Slate piece.  This was the piece that included the now infamous phrase, “the founding whoppers of Mormonism.”  This piece went on to become one we cited again and again and again on the blog as pure, unthinking, left-leaning bigotry, but as I reviewed our comments at the time, we went awfully easy on it.  But then there was not much meat there to argue with.

Weisberg’s “reasoning” was: 1) It’s acceptable to discriminate based on religion because religion is irrational; and 2) Mormonism is especially irrational because it is so young; therefore, 3) discriminating against Romney based on his faith is not only acceptable, but necessary.

Once again, we see the “win-win” strategy that went on to define so many of these attacks from the left.  Pit the religious conservatives against each other (Mormonism is especially irrational) and at the same time show that religious people in general should not really be seriously considered (all religion is irrational).

This piece was so blatant in its anti-religious fervor and so up-front in its anti-Mormon bigotry that it is amazing that Jacob Weisberg still works for Slate.   Imagine in this racially charged electoral period if he had written, “Well, some discrimination on race is acceptable, there are real genetic differences in the races, and discrimination towards blacks is particularly reasonable because we all know they have extra muscles.”  How long would he keep his job after something like that? Less than a minute would be my bet.

Some day this piece will be preserved in a museum, like some of the op-eds in southern newspapers that appeared during the Civil Rights movement.  People will read it and shake their heads in amazement that anyone actually thought that way, let alone said it out loud.

Ken Woodward – There is not much to say about Woodward’s April 2007 New York Times piece “The Presidency’s Mormon Moment,” that we have not already said.    In the piece Woodward attempted to describe why Americans might be uncomfortable with a Mormon president.  All he really succeeded in doing was angering a bunch of Mormons and other Christians that like them, spreading ignorance rather than helping to end it, and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was lazy.  (Lowell called him “clueless.”)

Few of the pieces we will examine here got a more thorough examination at the time of publication than this one, primarily because Woodward consented to a near hour long interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show the next day.  (Sadly, the transcript is no longer available for linking – but it is quoted extensively in our post.)  Essentially he did two things.  One, he addressed what he referred to as “common perceptions” about Mormons.  Not facts – he took people’s prejudices and misconceptions at face value and then proceeded to try to justify them.  The other thing he did was not bother to do any actual journalism.  Woodward more or less came out of retirement on the religion beat for the NYTimes to write the piece.  It was clear he did not a bit of original or new research for it.  He just sat down and started typing one day until he could hand in some copy and get paid.

While certainly not the most prejudiced piece written in the course of events (see Jacob Weisberg on the left or Joel Belz on the right for that honor), this piece was by far the least journalistic, even as an op-ed.  The saddest thing about this particular piece was that it appeared in the New York Times, the nation’s purported “paper of record.”  That Woodward attempted to cash in an easy buck in retirement is understandable, that the editorial board of this once great newspaper let it out is unconscionable.  Given the ever-dwindling importance of the daily metropolitan newspaper, it is difficult to say if this piece had much impact or not.  It certainly had the widest circulation of any of the pieces we discuss in this post, which in some ways makes it the most offensive.

We could go on about this piece for hours, but why?  Just follow the links.  It was like shooting fish in a barrel then and still is.  Shame on Woodward and the NYTimes.

Damon Linker – In January of ‘07, The New Republic published a piece by Damon Linker called “Taking Mormonism Seriously – The Big Test.“  The piece required a subscription to access initially and now the link appears to be dead altogether, so we have linked to our discussion of it.  The piece was huge news at the time it appeared – the guns had, by that time, been loaded and cocked to respond to something on precisely those lines – but as the campaign proceeded, this piece and argument appeared to fade into the woodwork.  In retrospect, it was a blunt instrument attempting to do surgery – a scalpel was needed.

In essence it examined Mormon belief and then attempted to say, “If you really believe this stuff, then . . . .”  The piece suffered from two enormous problems.  One was it ignored the political realities of the United States, and two it confused religious adherence with religious fanaticism.  The piece assumed that a president could somehow run roughshod over all action of the US government, as if we had no checks and balances.  The fact of the matter is, if the nation did mess up tremendously and elect a president with a nutcase agenda, there is Congress to balance the scales.  Further, while the president of the CJCLDS is considered a prophet, adherents to that faith are very different than fanatical Muslims following the edicts of a crazy Imam.  And even Imams generally only have a few fanatic followers.  There are fanatical Mormons, as there are fanatics of every faith, but then Romney had an established record as governor of Massachusetts.  I doubt we were in for any surprises.

Linker’s piece, in part, drew a great deal of reaction because it used an argument expected from the right.  We all, including people like me of the right, expected a theological attack to occur, but we expected more from the hinterlands of the far right of the Religious Right than we did from a source like this.  But we had the ammo and we were ready to use it.  But then it is also possible that by jumping on this piece so hard, those on the right became wise to the fact that such a blunt attack would not be helpful.

Despite a very different approach to the topic, this still fit the win-win mold of all the journalistic coverage from the left.  If these accusation could be made to successfully stick to Mormons, they could to anyone that claimed their religion really mattered to them.  Though more of a slippery slope approach to the win-win than the triangulation of other left side approaches, this piece stood to harm Evangelicals and the Religious Right in general just as much as any other piece from the left that attacked Romney on the basis of his religion.

Gary South -In April of ‘07 the then-fledgling Politico published a piece by self-described “Democratic Strategist” Gary South.  He claims a fundamentalist Pentecostal background in the course of the piece.  He goes to great length to establish his Christian bona fides.

This piece got little attention from the wider community watching this issue because frankly, South brought a rock to a knife fight.  He was so blatant in his attempts to drive a wedge between Romney, Mormons and other Christians that it made even the fanatical Religious Right types nervous.

His argument was essentially that because the CJCLDS believes themselves to be be the church restored, and therefore find all the rest of Christianity inferior, that Romney would be view all other faiths as illegitimate for participation in the public square.

Frankly, the argument itself made me buy into South’s claims of being a fundamentalist Pentecostal because I have had way too many fundamentalist Pentecostals tell me that I was going to hell as an Evangelical Presbyterian.  There is a great deal of the pot calling the kettle black in this one.  Perhaps that is why it got very little attention, it was an attempt at murder-suicide.  Regardless, it stands out as one of the uglier pieces written through the entire course of the discussion and campaign and is therefore worthy of note here.

Al Sharpton – The final entry in our list of left-leaning attack dogs is a man who makes a living by crying “VICTIM!”  In May of 2007, the Rev. Al Sharpton was debating Christopher Hitchens on the validity of faith when, as reported in the New York Times, and recorded on YouTube, he said:

“As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don’t worry, that’s a temporary situation.”

Lovely, just lovely.  Said Hugh Hewitt at the time, “If Al had declared that a Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim candidate would be defeated by those ‘who really believe in God,’ how great would the outcry be?”  We pointed out that there was a clear case of double standard in the press coverage because Sharpton largely got a pass.

This incident also proved to be a win-win for the liberals – the attack on Mormons obvious and the attack on orthodox Christians evident in how utterly bigoted Sharpton looks.  Which also points out another important lesson.  He who spends his life guarding against bigotry can become the most bigoted.

As Christians of all stripes grow increasingly worried about the voice of religion in the public square, this last important lesson may be the one to hold onto tightest.  As we fight for our voice, we cannot do so at the exclusion of others that should share in the freedom we demand, or else we come off exactly like Sharpton.  But that is the subject for another post in this series – in fact the very next one.

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Posted in News Media Bias, Telling The Story | 7 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Way back last October we started a series we called “Telling The Story.” We are finally getting around to the second installment.  The idea here is to collect a narrative on ‘08.  Before we get into all the details and long grass, it is probably best to establish a “meta-narrative.”  From our perspective as Romneyites in ‘08, the essential question is “Why did Mitt Romney lose?”  Was it The Question?

Let’s recount the key events that lead to Romney’s withdrawal:

• Huckabee plays the Mormon card and wins in Iowa.
• McCain comes out of nowhere, with some help from open primary shenanigans, to win New Hampshire.
• Giuliani “no shows” in Florida, and Charlie Crist surprises everybody.
• Early on Super Tuesday, McCain throws his West Virginia convention votes to Huckabee and pretty well seals the deal.

It is fair to say that the Romney campaign could have survived one, two, maybe even three of these events, but the combination and order proved deadly.   There were also some strategic miscalculations in the Romney campaign that served as a multiplier of the effects of these events.  Was there a central theme?  Certainly not to all of them, but Mike Huckabee is a dominant presence in that list, both initiating and capping this series of events.  And if we operate on the premise stated above that the Romney campaign could have survived some, but not all of the events, then it is fair to say that it was Mike Huckabee’s actions, which are strongly rooted in The Question, that proved fatal.

Lowell: I agree.  Huck’s effect was to be the spoiler.  In the end, the proof of his self-interest lay in his tag-teaming with McCain to help beat Romney, even after it was clear Huck had no chance to win the nomination.  The most likely explanation is that Huck wanted McCain to reward him with the veep nomination.  If that wasn’t it, the only possible explanation is that Huck simply wanted to stop Romney.  I am hard-pressed to think of an altruistic reason.

IOWA

Iowa is a simple story to tell.  That state has always hinged on religious issues.  It needs to be remembered that explicit religious figures have often carried it.  Pat Robertson being the most recent example.  Mike Huckabee polled well there from the beginning for precisely that reason, and he played on it.  In an interview with the New York Times, just a few weeks before the caucuses, he quipped, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers?”  To this day he insists that it was an innocent question, asked of the reporter when he was questioned about Romney’s faith and the reporter appeared to know more about it than he did.  There was also an apology to Romney some time later – more on that in a minute.

In the world of elections, weeks are a very long time, that is unless of course, the Christmas/New Year’s holidays are the weeks between interview and caucus,  in which case it is as if the interview occurred the day before the votes.

The effect is undeniable.  Romney campaign internal data shows that Romney hit his targets quite well in Iowa.  Romney won the traditional Republican base there.  The Huckabee voters were new votes in the mix – people that just don’t normally show up at the caucuses.   Who were these people?

The fact that there was and still is a portion of traditionally Christian people that feel a Mormon is unsuitable for high office based on his/her faith is undeniable.  Just check the archives of this blog if you need evidence.  But people also know that such discrimination is unacceptable in our nation.  Part of the reason the press coverage was so intense on the issue was that the press wanted to show that the average American Republican was still the ignorant bigoted redneck stereotype that fueled the news during the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60’s.  Well, it did not take the Klan people long in the ’60’s to figure out that standing in front of the news cameras was counter productive, and such people this time around knew better from the beginning.  They needed political cover – someone or something to provide a shadow in which they could operate.

Mike Huckabee, with his “innocent question,” provided precisely that cover.  Now people had something positive to talk about – they could be “for Huckabee” not “against Romney.”  But they knew, because Huckabee had sent them the signal, that at base they had to stop the Mormon.  Countless elections in the ’70’s in the deep South used precisely the same tactics.   Blacks began to seek office in droves after the Civil Rights Movement, but the bigotry remained.  Voting against someone because they were a “negra” was now unacceptable.  But everybody knew that voting for Billy Joe, even if he was an ignorant redneck, was a way to keep the blacks out of office, and under control.  After all, they’d just had a beer with Billy Joe in the Legion hall a few weeks ago, and well, you remember what he said.

A somewhat more positive example would be Ronald Reagan’s approach to pro-lifers in 1980.  Reagan, as governor of California, had signed perhaps the most liberal abortion bill ever passed.   He knew that on a national stage to be staunchly pro-life stance would cost him many needed votes.  But he also knew that pro-lifers were a political force to be captured and used.  So, he agreed to let them operate under his wing while being far more moderate on such matters in his campaign.

Which brings us back to Huckabee’s apologies and denials.  There are two important factors to recall about them.  For one, the story always runs page one and the retraction always runs buried.   Huck’s “innocent question” was a page one story in the NYTimes.  Huck’s apology was featured in the political press, but not so much the popular press.  Secondly, Huck apologized, but never admitted guilt.  That’s important.  By not admitting guilt, he left room for the anti-Mormon forces out there to continue to maneuver on his behalf.  Had he admitted guilt he would have had to repudiate such people.

Finally, there was the fact that Huckabee never had a chance of winning the nomination.  He simply did not have enough money or organization.  Like it or not, one cannot win without those things.   In the accelerated primary schedule we saw in 2008, there simply was not enough time after Iowa to capitalize on a win and build an organization unless you already had a skeleton in place.  Huckabee had no such thing – by the time he could organize on a scale sufficient to have a chance, it was over.  Any astute political observer knew this going in. Now, there a lot of voters out there that are not astute political observers, but there were a lot of such observers pointing out the facts.  When people back people like Huckabee, it is because they care about something other than that candidate actually winning – they want to send a message, or bring an issue to the forefront.  And in this case, at least some of them wanted to “stop the Mormon.”

Sadly, there were enough people so motivated to change the outcome in Iowa.  They may never caucus again, but they did in 2008.  When added to the other people that everybody knew were going to vote for Huckabee, the expected religious vote always present in Iowa, they got done what they wanted to get done.

Iowa is a story of when Arkansas slick met religious bigotry.   It was sad and it was an enormous blow to the Romney campaign.  Much of the Romney strategy was built on momentum coming out of Iowa.  We’ll discuss that more when we get to Florida.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Huckabee’s victory in Iowa reshuffled the deck, but it was New Hampshire, the next week, where the new game first came into serious view.  The major players in the primary, with the exception of Romney, had taken a pass on Iowa.  In fact, Rudy Giuliani took a pass on all the primaries prior to Florida, more on that when we get to Florida, but New Hampshire was slated to be the first vote where real candidates met head to head. Five factors were at play in New Hampshire that produced a surprising result.

Firstly, the McCain team did an outstanding job.  Just a few months before voting was to begin, Team McCain appeared to fall apart.  Virtually every major player in the McCain camp either left or was shown the door.  They appeared to be in complete disarray.  Fund-raising came to a virtual standstill and the campaign coffers appeared nearly dry.  Against this backdrop, the new team, obviously rapidly assembled and with limited resources, just got the job done.  Whatever else was at play in New Hampshire, they did something almost no one thought could be done.  (Addendum – a couple of weeks after publication – please be sure and see the comments to this post for some great insight into how McCain was able to pull this off.)

Secondly, New Hampshire’s independent nature and McCain’s ‘maverick’ image mesh perfectly.  Part of the reason the McCain team was reshuffled was because they were trying to cast him as a more mainstream Republican.  John McCain was, and is, “a maverick.”  On the national stage, I am not at all sure that is a good thing, but in New Hampshire, that is the perfect thing.  Open primaries were practically invented in New Hampshire where no one wants to be ‘beholden’ to a party.  McCain had won there against W. eight years earlier for pretty much the same reason.  Bush was viewed as the anointed Republican, and New Hampshireites were having none of this anointing stuff.  New Hampshire may be the only place in the nation where one can run against party in a primary and have a hope of prevailing.  John McCain fit the bill perfectly.

Thirdly, Romney took New Hampshire too much for granted.  Relying on momentum from Iowa, which did not materialize, and “neighbor” status as the former governor of Massachusetts, Romney did not organize or campaign nearly as hard as he should have in New Hampshire.  Of course, Giuliani was not participating and he was viewed as Romney’s chief rival.  When combined with the fact that the reshuffle in McCain’s camp made everyone think it was dead in the water, it made some sense for Romney to deploy resources elsewhere.  Obviously not enough sense though.

Lowell: Of course, after Iowa the news media and the punditry began repeating this meme:  After his Iowa loss, which was a blow to his overall strategy, New Hampshire was now a must-win for Romney.  After all, it was his neighboring state, and a loss there would mean real trouble for him, yada yada yada.  This was inevitable, and was a real case of the stars not aligning very well for Mitt.

Fourthly, the open primary system hurt – badly.  “Crossover” voting is real, and in many cases it is strategic. Democrats had two strong candidates in their primary, either one represented a reasonable general election candidate.  Not so the Republican side.  For the first time in decades the Republicans were without a presumptive nominee.  This pulled a lot of also-rans out of the woodwork.  Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter immediately come to mind.  Mike Huckabee would likely have been in that same category had it not been for the religion factor in Iowa.  Those are all the kinds of people who usually show up in Iowa, gain some media cred, then disappear to other things, capitalizing on the exposure. But when faced with the opportunity to throw the hoped-for Republican narrative into disarray, without opening the door to something equally disturbing in their own camp, I am sure many Democrats found the temptation irresistible.

Finally, “religious overload” could well have been a factor.  Reviewing the months leading up to Iowa in preparation for writing this piece was an eye-opener, even though I ‘lived” it.  It had all the hallmarks of a religious/political war.  Day after day, headline after headline, Huckabee ad after Huckabee ad, religion flat out dominated the narrative in Iowa.  It is reasonable to believe that moderates and independents, as New Hampshireites like to think themselves to be, would simply go for the least religiously identified candidate in a sort of backlash at too much religious influence in politics.  What is really sad about this is that Romney never sought to be identified as a particularly religious candidate.  He became such by virtue of a relentless press and the overtly religious Mike Huckabee.

We’ll never know for sure why the press decided his faith was the story line on Romney, but they did early and they worried it to death.   In the end, that may be the bottom line on the effect of The Question and the elections.  The press just never let it go.  They made it an issue.  Where did they get the idea that such was THE story?  Robert Novak was the first to bring it to light, and his claim was to have picked it up from “Evangelical sources.”  One wonders about Huckabee sources planting the rumors (or did the sources just tilt Huckabee up?) but we’ll never know.

FLORIDA

Michigan, South Carolina, and Nevada all came between New Hampshire and Florida.  Michigan and Nevada were big wins for Romney, and South Carolina saw the beginning and end of Fred Thompson, who turned out to be far less than expected, but these contests had little effect on the main narrative of the primaries.  All the momentum that Romney was supposed to have built by this point in time was aimed squarely at Florida and Rudy Giuliani.

The Romney momentum strategy was in part based on the Giuliani “overwhelm them in Florida strategy.”  As we have previously noted, Romney and Giuliani were considered the main players in the race.   McCain had been presumed dead, but after New Hampshire and good votes counts in the interim, such was obviously not the case.  Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee had garnered a lot of press, and in Huckabee’s case a few votes, but their lack of organization indicated that they were not serious players.  Giuliani was the man to beat.  His organization was formidable and his moderation stood in stark contrast to the out-of-favor Bush.  He had set up camp in Florida and intended to win so big there that the following week’s Super Tuesday could not change the tide.  Florida, with its very large former New York retired population seemed like a great place to make such a stand.  Romney intended to hit him having accumulated more momentum than Giuliani could generate in that state.

Well, as we have noted, Romney had not accumulated the hoped for momentum.  Michigan and Nevada helped, but without Iowa and/or New Hampshire they just did not appear to be that big a deal.  Fortunately, Giuliani had not built any momentum either.  He was polling a very distant third in Florida, behind McCain and Romney.  Maybe Romney did not need that momentum after all?  He was not running into the juggernaut he expected.   There was reason to hope and room to maneuver.  That was until Florida governor Charlie Crist stepped in.  But before we discuss that, we should take a paragraph to ask why Giuliani failed in Florida.

Most people understood there was dissatisfaction with the Bush administration, even in the base, but few realized that what was desired by the public was not adjustment, but wholesale change.  Romney represented minor adjustments in roughly the same ideological space.  Giuliani moved the party more towards the center, a larger adjustment, but hardly revolutionary.  Both were considered party insiders.  McCain stood as the maverick – someone that wasn’t just going to make adjustments, but was goIng to play a whole new game.  (This same thing is probably what won the general for Obama, but that is not the story we are telling here.)  To ideologues, McCain appeared to be a maverick for maverick’s sake, without an ideological center, but most people did not care, they just knew they did not want business as usual.  Huckabee also profited from this sentiment.  In light of that, Romney’s success in the primaries is extraordinary – he did far, far better than any of the other perceived “mainstream” candidates.  This should serve him very well if he decides to run again – as the Obama administration is rapidly reminding the nation there is no such thing as genuine “new game playing,” only posturing.

But back to Charlie Crist.  In a tight race, formal party leadership rarely endorses during a primary campaign – as exemplified by this video of then Chairman of the Mississippi Democrat party Wayne Dowdy.   It is their job to let the voters sort out who will be best.  Office-holding party leadership is a slightly different story. They are major public figures and their endorsements matter in their regions.  Typically, however, they endorse early (think Tim Pawlenty or Jon Huntsman both of whom endorsed McCain long before voting began) or they remain neutral and back the winner after it is over.  Careful political calculation in involved.  Last minute endorsements – in Florida Crist came out for McCain the day before voting – is a bit of an effort at “king-making” and it runs a serious risk of backfire. If the voting goes other then their endorsement they look seriously powerless.  Such was not the case in Florida.  Polling between McCain and Romney was fairly tight until Crist stepped in – then McCain broke out – and had the momentum going into Super Tuesday.

It was still a  gamble on Crist’s part.  But, as it was, Crist’s gamble paid off, at least until the results of the general election were in.  Neutrality would certainly have been the safest bet on Crist’s part.  Going into Florida it was a tight race; whoever prevailed there was going to be presumptive for Super Tuesday.  There was a great deal at stake.

Romney campaign insiders have told this blog that Crist’s endorsement of McCain came as a complete surprise.  One is forced to wonder what McCain promised Crist as quid pro quo.  It must have been enticing.

Lowell:  Crist had suggested that he would not endorse anyone in the Florida primary.  Four days before the election, here’s what he told National Journal in an interview:

Q: Now, John McCain endorsed you in your primary race in Florida. Why have you not endorsed him?

Crist: Well, I’m very appreciative of the fact that he was helpful to me early on, but frankly all of these candidates helped me during my campaign for governor, so I feel a sense of gratitude to each and every one of them. They are all friends of mine, and they are all running great campaigns here in the Sunshine State, and they’ve been here awhile, so I’m grateful they are spending a lot of good money in Florida. It’s good for our economy.

Q: Might you endorse?

Crist: I haven’t ruled it out, but as we get closer, it becomes slimmer, so time will tell.

Q: What’s going to make your mind up?

Crist: What would make my mind up? Probably be just a gut feel, to be honest. I try to lead with my heart — as I say, all of them are friends, and I think the world of each and every one of these candidates, and they are working incredibly hard, and time will tell.

Crist apparently had a “gut feel” for McCain just in time for the election.

This was a hinge point.  No single factor makes or breaks an election and the blame for the results of the ‘08 primaries cannot be laid solely at Charlie Crist’s feet.  But his last minute endorsement of John McCain was a pivotal factor, made all the more important by Huckabee’s Iowa shenanigans.   Had Romney the momentum he sought going into Florida, it is likely that Crist would have found the risks of endorsement too great.  Even had he endorsed McCain it would have been far less meaningful.

But now the stage was set for Super Tuesday.  Thompson and Giuliani were gone, McCain was the clear leader. Romney was still in the hunt, but behind.  Huckabee was being Huckabee – playing a game that had no chance of winning, but had one shot of significant influence left before being reduced entirely to mere media posturing.

SUPER TUESDAY

Barring a dead heat, as was the case for the Democrats in ‘08, so-called “Super Tuesday” is generally when the primaries are decided.   So many delegates in so many key states are at stake that while mathematical possibilities may exist thereafter, political realities are pretty well set in stone.  That said, it is a long day, with primaries, caucuses and conventions from coast-to-coast. Returns from the east come in long before voting is concluded in the west, and since it is not a national election, news outlets are more than willing to report the the early results, which can then have major affects on later voting.

Romney came into Super Tuesday needing to “break the mold.”  He had to win at least one that was not solidly in his corner already to stop McCain.  The most likely place for that victory was California, where polling showed it very close.  So much so that on the night before, Romney jetted to Long Beach for a thundering rally before jetting back to West Virginia where the first returns of the day were expected.   But California would be the last returns for the day, leaving lots of room for the earlier results to have an effect.

West Virginia came in first because it was not an election, it was a state party convention. And like all conventions, deals could be brokered – that is precisely what happened.  By this time it was the general perception was that it was (Romney v Huckabee) v McCain.  Of course, such was not actually the case.  Romney was far ahead of Huckabee in delegate count, but that did not seem to matter.  The echoes of the religious wars of Iowa held sway in the public’s and press’ mind. If that appearance could be maintained, it would distract Romney from battling his real foe – McCain.  Further, if Huckabee could be made to look like he was winning, Romney would be significantly weakened.

Military man that McCain is, he did not miss this strategic opening.  To win the nomination required over 50% of the vote.  In the first round it was Romney 41% and Huckabee 33%.  But things changed radically in the second round as the third place finisher (McCain) stepped up:

But before Huckabee’s surprising turnaround in the second round, McCain delegates told FOX News they had been instructed by the campaign to throw their support to Huckabee.

McCain delegate John Vuolo said former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer approached him and other McCain supporters at the convention and told them he had spoken to McCain, and that the best thing to do was to support Huckabee in the hope that Huckabee could beat Romney in this winner-take-all state.

Robbed of the appearance of momentum, maybe even losing one he was supposed to win, Super Tuesday went according to the polls and Romney knew that he could not win and so suspended his campaign a few days later in  masterpiece of a speech at CPAC.

In terms of delegate count, WV is not all that important but it says boatloads about the campaign and specifically about The Question as it applies to the primaries ‘08.  While the religious talk died significantly after Iowa, it cast the die for the rest of the race.  Mike Huckabee set Mitt Romney, a presumptive favorite for the years proceeding, squarely in his sights, and went for it.  Both men were competing for the social conservative vote, but outside the realm of social conservatives, they could not have been more different.  For Huckabee there was nothing, really, but the social conservative issues, while Romney tried to woo the crowd, but knew that fiscal policy (and has he been proven almost prophetically correct about that or what?!) and foreign policy were the front burner of the executive branch in the years to come.

The press had been for two years prior to the elections casting Romney as “the Mormon,” and has we have said, Huckabee was more than willing to play on that.  He did so in Iowa, even before the underhanded and slimy “Don’t they believe . . .” remark, simply by positioning himself as “the Christian” – playing on the never ending discussion in the theological world of “Are Mormons Christian?” and  in the political world “Will Evangelicals vote for a Mormon?”  This set the stage for this strategy in West Virgina to work.  The fact that it did – and that it was executed – says a great deal about Mike Huckabee.

Simply put, John McCain would have never thrown his WV convention votes to Huckabee, if Huckabee had anything resembling a chance of actually winning the nomination.  Here endeth all claims on the part of Huckabee that he was a legitimate candidate, legitimately seeking the nomination.  Huckabee continued to “campaign” for weeks after this, not withdrawing until his failure to achieve the nomination became an actual mathematical impossibility.  He continued to insist that he was a legitimate possibility to win, even at one point claiming the possibility of miracles.  Motivations in a situation like this can never be clearly understood, but Huckabee’s actions on and after Super Tuesday clearly indicate that his motivations were other than obtaining the Republican nomination for President.

Motivations and Memes

So, the political facts of primary ‘08 are that the press established a background of Evangelicals v. Mormon.  Mike Huckabee established himself as “The Evangelical.”  Mitt Romney did not seek a religious identity in the campaign, but the press and Mike Huckabee made sure everybody knew he was “the Mormon.”  Huckabee played this angle overtly, remorselessly and untiringly in Iowa.  This cast the campaign as Huckabee v. Romney and the winner of that was taking on everyone else.

John McCain put together a great effort in New Hampshire, which when coupled with religious fatigue, put McCain out front.  Between NH and Florida, Romney won a couple, but he could not aim that momentum at McCain, as Huckabee had taken all the air out of the room when it came to who Romney had to compete with rhetorically, and Giuliani just failed to materialize.  (If you need more evidence of this fact consider that Romney had to deliver his “Faith in America” speech, masterpiece that it was, in December – way earlier than he wanted, or than could be truly effective – and he had to because Huckabee forced it with his Iowa shenanigans.)  When Charlie Crist surprised the world with his endorsement of John McCain, the day in Florida was done.

Hope remained for Romney on Super Tuesday, but it required something extraordinary to be realized.  When McCain, in one deft strategic move, robbed Romney of that something extraordinary and told Mike Huckabee he was a loser,  that hope faded.

Two questions remain.  Why did Mike Huckabee play the game the way he did?  He was clearly after something besides the nomination.  And, why was he able to succeed at eliminating Romney so effectively?

Because Mike Huckabee is not talking about this, the answer to the first question can only be speculative.  He could have just been playing for recognition that he could then leverage into something else, like the TV show he now has.  But then, he had most of that leverage after Iowa.  He did not need to keep going.  It is possible that Huckabee was simply trying to “stop the Mormon” for reasons of pure political bigotry – that is precisely what his “campaign strategy” seemed aimed at doing. But he has worked too hard to change that impression, albeit after the fact, to be able to make a strong case for such.

It is more likely that Huckabee suffered from the grandiose delusions that affected all Evangelicals this round – that the nomination was “theirs” somehow by right of their position in the party.  Many of the people that felt, and frankly feel, that way were anti-Mormon bigots and they were not the least bit afraid to whisper in Huckabee’s ear whenever it suited them.  The grandiosity that many Evangelicals operated under in the ‘08 cycle could have large implications for the Republican party going forward, but that is a subject for another post in this series.  There is also a need to figure out who many of these actors were and name them – also the subject for another post.

Lowell: Our discussion of those actors will include a discussion of the role of Evangelical opinion leaders like James Dobson and Focus on the Family.  The evidence seems to be that Dobson liked Romney, but was (a) so politically inept and (b) so afraid of his organization’s membership, that he ended up hurting Romney much more than helping him.   There is much to say about the likes of Dobson and the Rev. Al Mohler in this regard.

But there is no point in speculating endlessly, the second question matters a lot.  There was a single “meme” that tied together several of the ideological attacks on Romney that created a cognitive field on which these efforts could flourish.  In the political realm, the “flip-flop” charge stuck.  It was based on several apparent changes of position on Romney’s part.  Of course, no such thing happened, there are constraints on the power of an executive office and its holder, at least if they are interested in preserving democracy, must live within those restraints, even against his or her better judgment. But that fact did not stop the charge from echoing.

In the religious realm, the idea was “Mormons lie.”  It is based, loosely on the apparent changes in Mormon doctrine over the last couple of centuries – the entire history of the Mormon church I should add.  Not being a Mormon myself, I cannot do a reasonable apology of the shifts, but I can note that my own orthodox Christian faith is full of them, just on a longer time scale.  It is not a charge that can be leveled at another without serious risk of it coming back to haunt.

These ideas came together because some made the connection that if Mormons are willing “to play fast and loose with doctrine,” they would be more than willing to change political positions like a chameleon changes colors.   Of course, this connection is fallacious because the underlying facts are misrepresented and misunderstood, but that did not matter.  This formed an ideological base on which Huckabee and McCain could operate.  It created a situation where they had a presumption of trust while Romney had to earn it double.

MOVING FORWARD

As we move forward in the “Telling The Story” series, we will need to look at the “good guys” and the “bad guys” and examine in more detail the rhetorical wars that lead up to the campaigns and elections themselves.  We will also need to look at the implications of what happened for the future of both the Republican Party and Mitt Romney.

Through these events, Evangelicals have very much carved themselves out as a group apart.  That limits their political effectiveness, but also has huge ramifications for both parties.    It’s going to be an interesting few years.

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INTRODUCTION

They say that “journalism is the first draft of history.”  Well, if that is the case, then blogging is the zeroeth.   Certainly that is true of this blog which attempted in large part to simply chronicle all that was written and said about Mitt Romney, his religion, and his efforts to seek the office of President of the United States, and subsequent “campaign” for the vice presidential spot.  While we managed to collect quite a bit of information here, and present it in the moment, we have done little to fashion that information into any sort of a narrative.

Now that it is all over, at least for this cycle, we are going to attempt a series of of very occasional (read “when we have some rare time on our hands”) posts we are calling “Telling The Story.”  These posts will be our effort to take all the information we have gathered and fashion them into some sort of narrative.

So, without further ado…

Ideas Underlying Issues

There is no doubt in the minds of the authors of this blog that religious prejudice, even bigotry, was a significant factor in the lack of electoral success experienced by Mitt Romney in the 2008 campaign cycle.  This prejudice and bigotry came in two distinct forms.  The first was that typical of irreligious people towards persons of faith.  Such prejudice and bigotry generally does not make significant distinctions between kinds, brands, or expressions of faith; it pretty well lumps them altogether into a single category.  The other form is inter-religious prejudice and bigotry.

Prejudice and bigotry, while irrational, nonetheless are rooted in ideas.  Some concept, some thought, catches on, regardless of its level of support in reason or fact, and becomes justification for the exclusion that expresses itself prejudicially.  This case is no exception.  The ideas that underlie the prejudice from the irreligious and numerous and actually exceptionally well documented in a variety of sources from a variety of religious perspectives.  There is no need for this blog to deal with those extensively.

The inter-religious prejudice and bigotry that was seen is; however, born in a fairly short list of ideas that require some significant analysis.  This is required by the general lack of rigor with which the ideas were addressed, typical of prejudice, during the campaign.   The ideas were simply asserted, in an apparently rational, if not fully rigorously analyzed, fashion and arguments against were built upon them.

What were those ideas?  They can be summarized in two simple, related statements:

• Mormons are not Christians.
• Mormonism is a cult.

“Mormons Are Not Christians”

They certainly are not traditional, orthodox Christians, but is that necessarily the end of the story?  The fact of the matter is there is no clear cut answer to what constitutes “Christian.” Nelson’s Bible Dictionary defines it this way:

An adherent or follower of Christ. The word occurs three times in the New Testament: “The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch” <Acts 11:26>; Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to be a Christian” <Acts 26:28>; Peter exhorted, “If anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed” <1 Pet. 4:16>. In each instance, the word Christian assumes that the person called by the name was a follower of Christ. Christians were loyal to Christ, just as the Herodians were loyal to Herod <Matt. 22:16; Mark 3:6; 12:13>.

The designation of the early followers of Christ as Christians was initiated by the non-Christian population of Antioch. Originally it may have been a term of derision. Eventually, however, Christians used it of themselves as a name of honor, not of shame. Prior to their adoption of the name, the Christians called themselves believers <Acts 5:14>, brothers <Acts 6:3>, or saints <Acts 9:13>, names which also continued to be used.

In modern times the name Christian has been somewhat emptied of its true meaning as a follower of Christ. To some today, Christian means little more than a European or American who is not Jewish, while others have sought to make its proper use the name of a particular denomination. However, its original meaning is a noble one, of which any follower of Christ can rightly be proud.

Wikipedia and Answers.com provide very similar definitions. A web site devoted to “Religious Tolerance” has s similar, but perhaps even broader, understandably, definition.  Interestingly, even when traditional, orthodox Christians turn to devotional reflections on the meaning being a Christian, the definition they arrive at is one that would be inclusive of ther various heterodox groups like the Mormons.

It is only when someone specifically asks the question “Are Mormons Christian?” that we seem to arrive at definitions of what it means to be a Christian that would exclude Mormons. The distinctions that do get made lie in the realm of theology and doctrine, not in any common understanding of a word.  This fact accounts for a great deal of the difference in attacks on Romney’s faith from the religious and irreligious.  The doctrinal differences that are so important to the religious are completely immaterial to the greater world at large.  The irreligious fail to see or understand the distinctions – to them such distinctions simply say “intolerance.”

This blog, of course has adopted the idea that Mormons are Christians, though we use significant adjectives to distinguish Mormonism from the more traditional expressions of faith in Jesus Christ.   We purposefully use the term “adopted” in the prior  sentence because a definitive determination seems impossible.  Arguments  on both sides seem more derived from having arrived at a conclusion and seeking to justify it than from any sort of first principle derivation.  Certainly linguistically one MUST accept Mormons as Christians since they call on Christ, but a religion is so much more than a mere linguistic understanding.  There is a necessity for a distinction, the only question is whether one makes the distinction in the definition of the word or the adjectives applied to it.  Such strikes this writer as an arbitrary choice to be made on factors other than the immediate definitional needs.

And so with that, we turn to the other issue:

Mormonism Is A Cult

I examined this issue in extensive detail on my “Godblog” early in the life of this blog.   It was a series in four parts and there is little to be added to it.  Please refer:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV

But having examined these two questions, we really need to wonder:

Why Does It Matter?

For most people, it just mattered.  There was little effort to write to justify the concern, there simply was a concern and that was enough.  A few people did try to justify the concern, but their efforts we ugly and petty and rooted in bigotry.

The argument, as I understand and have picked it up mostly from conversation and by reading in other, related areas, seems to be a variant of the argument that the irreligious use against religion in general.  The irreligious claim that religion is so irrational as to preclude the believer from the public forum.  “After all,” goes the mantra, “how can we allow people whose thought is so stunted to participate in reasonable public debate?”  And then, of course, the “wall of separation” comes up, completely neglecting the fact that the wall is between religious and government institutions, not between religious citizens and their government.

The traditionally Christian use a variation of this argument, claiming that while their faith is certainly rational enough to allow them participation in the public forum, that Mormonism is so irrational that it must be excluded. For some reason such people are completely blinded to the similarities in their argument to their opposition’s argument that they fail to see the self-negating nature of using it.

Perhaps the problem lies in the arguments so often used by traditional Christians to refute the argument from the irreligious.  In general, traditional Christians talk about worldviews in order to escape religio-speak in public debate.  Such is a reasonable and important distinction.  Worldview is essentially ones basic philosophical principles used to make decisions about things.  But after establishing this, they take things a step too far.  They equate, mistakenly, worldview and religion.  The mistake is made in a good faith effort to demonstrate that the left hold their worldview with as much fervor, and as little or less supporting evidence,  as the religious right.  In other words, the left worldview is a religion too.

But once one does that, equates worldview and religion, it creates a means by which religious discrimination in the public forum becomes justified.  Rather than worldview as a philosophical viewpoint (shaped in part by religion) becoming a flag behind which people of similar viewpoints can rally – it becomes a basis for distinction and factionalizing.  It creates enemies rather than allies.

And thus, despite the fact that Mormons are natural allies of the Evangelical and otherwise religious right in the political arena, there are excluded.  The result is inevitable political defeat.  Political success in out nation requires the building of coalitions, not tearing them apart over issues that are, at least in the political sense irrelevant.

Why Shouldn’t It Matter

Among the many genius’ of our founding fathers was that politics and governance was about expediency, not philosophy.  They were men of quite different philosophical and religious viewpoints.  There were the very religious (John Jay for example) and the nearly anti-religious (Thomas Jefferson).  They sought to find a way to govern ourselves without the impediment of religious parochialism bringing governance to a standstill, or worse, civil war.

They arrived at a means of doing so by first separating ecclesiastical institutions and governmental ones.   They finished the task by equalizing the voice of religion in the public forum with all other voices.  Please note – they DID NOT exclude the religious voice, they simple gave it no more or no less significance than other voices.  The religious voice had greater influence only in that, and if, the majority of the populace shared in that voice.  But all voices were welcomed to the debate.

Historically, the traditional Christian voice has constituted a majority of the nation, thus it was fair to describe this as a “Christian nation.”  While most citizens of this nation still claim to be “Christian” they do so from such a breadth of political and philosophical viewpoints that even that banner has been rendered virtually meaningless in any political sense.  I personally go to church with people every Sunday whose politics, and for that matter worldview, are almost directly opposed to my own.  Does this mean one of us is more of less “Christian” than the other?  Maybe, but under the American system it is not government’s job to make the distinction – it is government’s job to set aside such argument for the sake of doing the necessary work of governance.

It is important to remember that the constitution starts by listing what is, and is not, the job of government.   If something is not the job of government, then government is supposed to leave it alone.  Religion is among the things government is supposed to leave alone.  But that also implies that we, as voters, should leave those concerns at the door of the voting booth, if we do not we embroil the government in areas the constitution specifically excludes it from.  Our voting booth decisions are to be made within the context of what government is specifically charged with doing.

None of this minmizes inter-religious competition, or religious/irreligious competition, it simply moves the battleground to somewhere other than governnance.

And So We Conclude…

…a couple of things.

The first conclusion is that those that sought to introduce the question of whether Mormons are Christians, or proclaimed Mormonism a cult, in the context of  of the elections did so solely for the purpose of labeling and using said label as a disqualifier.  Not relaizing that sucha  tactic would, i the end be self-defeating, for such tactics, once used and justified could be as easily turned aginst those that did it, as they did against others.

The second conclusion is that by introducing such factors into the election debate, we bring governance into areas and arenas where it was not, in this nation at least, every intended to go.  This likewise, is a move that could create as many problems as it solves.

From Here

In our next few “Telling the Story” posts we will begin to chronicle the debates and attacks that happened along the philosophical lines that we have laid out in this post.

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