Mitt Romney and the Anti-Mormon Sentiment
I just read on the Deseret News website an article describing some of the voter sentiment about mormons and Mitt Romney. I am amazed at the anti-mormon feeling that can continue to be felt and stated so vocally.
One Newspapers’ report:
USA Today emphasized some of the anti-Mormon sentiment after Super Tuesday?s vote when it wrote: “Many evangelical Christian voters also were unwilling to overlook Romney’s religion. It didn’t help that he paused his campaign Saturday to attend the funeral of Mormon Church leader Gordon Hinckley in Utah. West Virginia GOP convention delegate Brian Bigelow said on Tuesday he would support ‘whoever can defeat Mitt Romney. I don’t believe that Bible-believing Christians should take part in the mainstreaming of Mormonism’.”
Another Newspapers’ thoughts:
New York Times columnist Timothy Egan also pointed to evangelicals for Romney?s demise. “Blame Christians,” he wrote. “By significant margins, in poll after poll, in vote after vote a solid block of evangelical Christians said they would never vote for a Mormon. Since evangelicals made up nearly half of the Republican primary vote in some states, Romney was up against a deep well of distrust of a religion that many evangelicals still label a cult.”
Maybe for this particular election the country is already trying to grasp with the notion of electing its first black president or woman president and maybe voters didn’t want to have to think about possibly electing a mormon president. I don’t know but I had hopes for Mitt. Unfortunately things didn’t work out this time. I hope that for the future maybe the country will be more willing to accept Mitt for who he is and the potential value in leading the country. I hope he runs in 2012. I actually think Republicans and Mitt will have a better chance then to be elected as president. I think McCain has a tough road to hoe and we’ll see how he can compete with Obama or Clinton. What are your thoughts?
February 13th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
My thoughts, depending on who runs: McCain over Clinton, but Obama over McCain.
One of the criticisms I’d heard about Obama lately was that, while his speeches are excellent, his “sound bites” weren’t so great. This is something easily remedied, however, and it looks like he’s well on track:
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/02/remix_america.html
February 27th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
“I am amazed at the anti-mormon feeling that can continue to be felt and stated so vocally.”
I don’t see what the mystery is. Some people just don’t like some religions. This has been going on for centuries. Only a few decades ago, voters were wary of electing a Catholic. People view religions on a spectrum. For some, Mormonism is on their “unacceptable” side of the spectrum.
Mr. Romney is electable. He just isn’t electable this year.
Best,
Del