Posted by
LowDownCentral on Monday, October 22, 2007 6:29:04 PM
By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon
For nearly eight months, there has been a spate of articles questioning the religious belief of one presidential candidate: Mitt Romney. This is not because he is the only candidate who happens to be a man of faith, but because he is of the Mormon faith. Every writer that injects a man’s religion into a campaign as an issue has a dearth of negative information to write about.
The nonsensical hammering of the Mormon point makes us wonder if the MSM are actually trying to say “First Moron in the White House” – in which case, it’s a wide open field.
Plainly, the liberal media and secular progressives lack a sense of decorum. Each article they write is a deliberate attempt to frame Governor Romney as a probable cultist with designs on America . This predatory rhetoric is nothing more than depraved indifference to logic, trying to obfuscate politics with faith in order to distract attention from the real issues facing Americans.
Let he who is without faith cast the first political stone!
For anyone to describe The Church of Latter Day Saints as a cult, one first needs to understand the unabridged definition of the word “cult,” which is a particular system of religious worship with reference to its rites and ceremonies. Taken literally, this definition would cut a mile-wide swath across all religions.
In a recent Newsweek article, Campaign ’08: The Making of Mitt Romney Jonathan Darman and Lisa Miller , take a sloppy stab at construing that “ Romney has been unable to shake his authenticity problem....” Why? Because he does not choose to focus on his religion but rather on how he can help better serve this country. He is not running for high theological office, but as President of a multi-cultural and religiously diverse nation. They also say: “the fate of Romney ’s candidacy may come down to one question: Can he embrace his own biography to create a political and personal narrative that has heart and soul?” The Newsweek writers will have to build a stronger mousetrap than that.
Would they pose the same question in connection with Hillary Clinton ’s heart and soul, or genuine lack thereof? Was it with her heart, or soul, that she whipped out a fake southern accent for a church rally? Or simply the calculated machinations of her cafeteria Christianity?
Miller and Darman should bag the cuttings on their barber’s floor. That way they’d have limitless hairs to split.
John F. Kennedy very wisely pointed out in his 1960 address to Southern Baptists about his Catholicism:
“But because I am a Catholic and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured—perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again—not what kind of church I believe in for that should be important only to me, but what kind of American I believe in.”
Substitute the word “Mormon” for “Catholic” and it remains the perfect response to an imperfect liberal bone of contention.
Harry Reid is a Mormon. Yet, no matter how annoying his vituperative railing in the Senate is, there are no Republicans who have publicly attributed it to his Mormon faith. Have any of these supposedly fair-minded journalists put forth examples of how Orrin Hatch’s, Harry Reid ’s and other Mormon members of the House and Senate have allowed this so-called “cult” to interfere with their elected office? Has any member of the liberal media ever seen or heard Mitt Romney proselytizing during his term as Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or do they assume he is saving it for a special situation – such as the Presidency?
This is a country founded on religious freedom, therefore it is mind-boggling when secularists (and unfathomable when the media) persecute anyone who does not share their irreverent values, unless, of course, it is to protect the religious freedom of terrorists. John Kennedy pointed out, “we have a system of checks and balances in this country that would not permit a President to subvert the First Amendment guarantees of religious liberty.”
So what are these critics really afraid of?
Unless and until every candidate is subjected to the same battery of questions about their respective faiths, it is time to move on with the election and focus on the strengths each man or woman brings to the table in 2008.