Willard, no doubt reeling from Huckabee’s surge in Iowa, is going to give a speech this week about why Republicans should ignore the fact that he’s in a heretical cult embrace a Mormon.
Mitt Romney will address head-on suspicions about his Mormon faith in a speech he plans to deliver Thursday in Texas, not far from where John F. Kennedy delivered an address nearly 50 years ago that many credit with defusing concerns about his Catholic faith in his election.
Mr. Romney plans to give the address, to be called Faith in America, at the Presidential Library in College Station, Tex., 80 miles from Houston, the site of Kennedy’s speech. His campaign is calling it an opportunity for him to “share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor’s own faith would inform his presidency if he were elected.”
How touching.
But the Times, incredibly, fails to mention that Romney has said publicly that he would not have a Muslim in his cabinet. Romney can’t have it both ways. He can’t be reciting poetic odes to religious tolerance for a national audience while pandering to the GOP base’s bigotry on campaign stops.
How the Times can do a story on the speech and not mention this inherent contradiction is beyond me.
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again
I’m trying to thing of something more offensive than comparing Romney to JFK, and failing.
comparing Bush to FDR?
There are a number of jokes there, but I’d better not touch any of them…
For any of you who followed the sad story of the Eagles coach and his two sons..this is an interesting discussion of the role of his religion in the story.
http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2857
Howdy, Blue Texan…
The same as they could do this headline;
Cheney Loves Puppies!
What they would conveniently leave out,
With Dipping Sauce!
Steve Benen had a very good analysis of why Romney’s speech won’t work.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerrepo…..13787.html
So Mitt now has decided to address the Mormon issue, which he’s been in denial about till now. I wonder what’s prompted that. As for the JFK comparison, that’s so phoney baloney–JFK’s Catholic issue is not at all the same as Mitt’s Mormon issue. Not by a long shot. Again: nice try but no cigar. Americans are simply not ready to vote for a Mormon for president. Besides, Mitt is such an unpleasant fellow, and intellectually dishonest, and a man of bad faith (in the way that Jean-Paul Sartre formulated it).
Albatross, Romney is no JFK, and Catholicism is not Mormonism. He will have a hard time making the comparison. Though religion may not be a deciding factor for most of us, I think he’s got an uphill battle convincing the Evangelicals.
The only way Slick would get called on such an egregious
hypocrisy would be if he re-registered D.
Besides, as Hugh Hewitt said, Romney will only be discriminated against by the liberals who hate religion.
The same liberals from liberal Masschusettes and the same liberals who have a Mormom as their Senate Majority Leader.
Damn those discriminatory liberals!
-G
Mitt Romney will address head-on suspicions about his Mormon faith
He’s a…M-M-M-M-MORMAN????
Hilarious.
I’m still worried that Obama might be a Muslom. /snark
I would like to point out that Islam also considers the Bible to be “a” holy text, and it is subsumed as part of their teachings. Islam and the Prophet Muhammed doesn’t seem all that different from Mormonism and Joseph Smith the Prophet.
But the real question is, how would JFK have felt about strapping dogs to the roof of a car?
By now, I’m also getting quite used o the newly designed site–font and all. I was a little bit worried when I logged on this morning. Last Friday was the last time I logged in. I took the weekend off…
How the Times can do a story on the speech and not mention this inherent contradiction is beyond me.
Really? I stopped reading the Times years ago.
My eyes and brain are getting a bit crazed from the new design. All the moving parts and the bright white background are hard on me. So I’ve been here a lot less. It takes constantly moving my window around to avoid all the moving parts in all the ads above, below and to the right side and then move back again when I want to advance the text and read more.
I also really miss the ability to reply with a quote of the person to really be able to have a conversation.
I see the Author name is now in the heading section for each book. Thank you for that. It would also be good to have the time there. I have no idea what times the Saturday or Sunday book salons are.
K. Drum speculates that it was pressure from Congress that got the Iran NIE released.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c…..012623.php
Ads by Google–I like that!
Todays’ top video–I like that too… This new design will work out, I can tell.
Oh jeepers. I need to get my eyes checked.
At first pass I thought you said “Republicans should [strikeout] embrace a Moron“…
And my first thought: George Bush has now made being a Moron a proper noun?
OT, New Froomkin up
The realease of the Iran NIE is the sound of the dam breaking.
Yeah–Mitt is a Mor(m)on…
That could probably be said of almost all Homo sapiens, including Sartre himself in the end.
Whether Catholicism is not Mormonism is not the issue. JFK made it clear that he would be representing the American people, not the Catholic church.
The book salons have generally been at 5:00 pm EST — 2:00 pm PST.
The ghosts in the machine do need to add the times to the book salon page, but I’m sure they will get to it.
I liked the video, too. Perini is beyond clueless. Why she has that job,
I cannot fathom.
Good article, it highlights many of problems with Romney’s plan. The whole idea of giving the GOP a lecture on the seperation of church and state is absurd, as the current crop wants to deny the separation that Kennedy was compelled to highlight.
Yep. The site is stable as far as I can see, and its the fine strokes that are left. Very good transition this time, and with tons of additions, that’s rare indeed.
Seems to me I read somewhere that not all the Mormons are pleased that he is running. Felt that it brought too much attention to the church.
Defending the indefensible. Tough work even for the gifted…
Geez. I never met a Mormon who DIDN’T want to bring attention to their church. They’re bigtime prostelytizers (probably bigger than the R.C.s proportionately), and would have thought this would be a great opportunity for them to drive in people’s driveways & know on doors.
Make that “knock” on doors.
Please bring back EDIT.
You definitely have a point there…
Let alone Perino.
You mean you really don’t know?
Hmmm. I seem to have had a comment disappear into the toobz.
Just wanted to let folks know that Froomkin is asking folks to leave any questions they would like to ask Little Boots (scheduled presser tomorrow) in the comments of today’s column.
Techies:
What does that quote function (on the left of the Link one) really do?
The details of what Romney says or what Mormonism is are not important. The propaganda victory is having gotten people to repeatedly associated JFK with Romney through the “Romney’s JFK speech” meme. For comparison, were the phrase “Romney’s ‘Admiral Stockdale’ moment” then this would be a propaganda defeat.
I’d rather say this is Romney’s “Peter in the Garden of Gesthemane” moment, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it does it?
Drop text to be quoted into the comment field, select it and click that icon – indents it for zig…
On my machine (Mac OS G4 running FireFox) it places the open and close blockquotes stuff out there such that I can click in the middle with whatever I want to quote and be done with it
It puts text into blockquote format.
I am sort of hoping mit becomes the candidate for the republicans…I had high hopes it was going to be rudy because he could not win in the general election but it seems to me friends of potaki are throwing rudy under the bus
whenever it seems as if rudy has weathered a storm, yet another storm brews…someone is feedingn this to the press
we know this because you take krystol and he’s saying rudy is scandal ridden…this means they don’t want rudy to run…if they wanted rudy to run krystol wouldn’t be piling on
I am pretty certain this is a potaki payback
anyway, back to mit the mormon
he does not believe Christ is the savior, he thinks he is gonna be god when he dies and he thinks his wife needs his permission to get into heaven
I’m thinking we want this guy to run
Good point. But it could work exactly the other way around. Quotes such as “Mill Romney is no JFK” come to mind.
Very interesting. Good point.
But another thing about the JFK comparison that bugs me (aside from everything else) — he gave that speech during the general (WAY late in the general), whereas Romney’s is during the primary.
What does it say about the GOP that Romney has to do it now?
But they want to control the conversation. The last thing they want is to have people looking behind the “nice family” picture and seeing the theology. BTW, LDS’s are offended by the “not christian” meme..they consider themselves the only christians; everyone else is an apostate.
Spurious @29, I agree with you on that premise, but my point was the Evangelical base will have a harder time accepting Mormonism vs. Catholicism.
Good point. And they’re certainly not in control of the national conversation on Mormonism. Doubt that Romney’s speech will establish that for them.
Not certain I agree here.
A socially conservative Pope tends to accentuate the similarities,
but historically Catholics have not been included in the Bible Belt tent any more than Mormons.
That Pope thing sticks in the craw, don’cha know.
I’m a little slow on the draw here, but the story is that Fitz was willing to give waxman stuff but is being prevented from doing so by WH? I saw that mentioned here but thought it was just speculation. I think this could be very big. I’ll probbaly pop over to Macy’s place. Mukasey didn’t get asked about this, did he?
At least JFK didn’t wear magic underwear.
according to marylin monroe he did
newtownusr, dakine01, and bethmeacham:
Thanks much. That’s an improvement!
Wear magical underwear. Feel the magic where it counts.
I used to hand type that indent function before…
bring back EDIT
Wear what you wear where you want to wear it
Shorter JFK:
My White House will not take orders from the Pope.
Shorter Willard:
My White House will not take orders from Gordon B. Hinckley. I promise I will be taking orders from James Dobson instead.
The Whitehouse has precluded the DC United States Attorney from even looking into the case of the Whitehouse’s use of executive privilege wrt Myers and Bolten and their ignoring subpoenas to testify before Congress in the matter of the fired USA’s. The Fitz thing may not be such a stretch after all.
And I’m surprised that it didn’t come up in Mukasey’s confirmation hearing, too. Have to watch it again…
I remember when I was a teenager there was a large billboard where I lived that said ” Do you know what the Catholic Church is doing to your country?”
I think it must be the magic underwear that makes him walk funny. Notice, they will never show him walking around…he walks weird.
What’s up with the blog roll?
Semper ubi sub ubi.
Oh my goodness gracious me. Someone get me the smelling salts.
I keep tuning back to the mortgage crisis conference playing all day on C-SPAN. Most of it seems to be about how we need more regulation, and we need it yesterday. (Actually we needed it several years ago.) But I thought the market would be self-regulating? Where are are the economic neocons who think militaritistic (i.e., boom & bust) economic policy is just perfect?
Interesting..I was going to give some references to “The Pearl of Great Price” as an example of the psychology of religion…and the Google listing seem to have been “sanitized”. Looking at the first few pages of Google listings..there are few if any that talk about “the real story”. The Wiki also is “sanitized”..straight dogma, nothing about the scroll being rediscovered in New York, etc.
Please forgive the test – I’m trying to figure out what is causing the weird symbols to appear without checking all the back threads to see if anyone identified the problem:
Is it …?
Well, definitely three periods is one answer. *g*
Gee, more smelling salts. I now find out that the Justice Dept has brought NO lawsuits under fair housing laws while all this disproportionate subprime lending has been going on to protected classes.
I feel a bout of nausea coming on.
I have seen that too but it goes back to normal on a full page refresh.
Jane picked a good time to not be living on the coast of Oregon today.
125 mph gusts last night, sustained winds of 60 plus today, over two inches of rain and more still to come.Two storms back to back, they closed the highways going to the coast because high winds are knocking trees over faster than they can clear them.
I just had a power brownout while typing this!
Just couldn’t resist, couldja, Hugh? *g*
And BTW, now is NOT the time to bring fair housing lawsuits because the housing crisis is just too large to deal with poor people. That’s what they said. Not making it up. Not surprised either. Another book here.
Sorry to be parochial here, but are those storms headed toward Alta, UT? Just called the lodge I always stay at & they have plenty of availabilty for week starting 12/15.
Anyone close to a TV? I hear Stephen Hadley will be spinning the NIE.
Let the market work.. the market answers all problems. free markets rah rah rah…
the market solves everything… gimme some markets
You should be good. Coming from the southwest heading northeast. Oregon and Washington getting clobbered with almost all of it.
All hail Milton Friedman.
I don’t see him on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox. I heard he was going to sin this afternoon, but don’t remember the details.
Make that “spin” not “sin”. Some typos are too good to be corrected.
Also not on either C-Span as I type this.
Thank you, luv! Weird glitch, that; but hard refresh worked as you promised.
Thinkprogress said Hadley’s presser was for 3:15. But 24/1 news finds some football guy’s funeral more important.
Economic troubles…housing crisis…why isn’t Bush pulling out his magic tax-cut-fix-it-kit now?
Only a 30″ base but they say snow for the next week.
I don’t want to be insensitive, but if I hear one more word about Sean Taylor I think I’m going to scream.
Once CNN was finished with football guy, they went on to Imus’s new debut. Romney is next topic. Guess Iran’s nukes just not very important.
Snow report says it’ll start again tomorrow. Went from 17″ base to 32″ base in about a week. If those storms hit this week, base should be adequate by 12/15, but I’ll wait for another couple of days before finalizing my plans.
Sounds just about right. I can’t bring myself to watch MSM news any more. I know I’ll get the important parts here on FDL.
new Jane upstairs
Romney can’t have it both ways.
Romney is a republican. I fail to see where blatant duplicity and hypocrisy would be a problem for him appealing to ‘da base’.
.
As a “progressive” who is also a “Mormon”, I will be very interested in Willard’s speech. I can’t stand the guy as a Presidential candidate. And I don’t think that making a speech which focuses on his religion is going to help his loss of political momentum. He lacks “genuineness” and, as someone else commented recently, seems to view the race for President as just another business deal that he needs to close, any way that he can. These qualities in Willard stand out when he is contrasted with someone like Huckabee. That is why Willard’s poll numbers are suffering.
There are plenty of bigots who can not stomach the idea of a “Mormon” president, just as other bigots can not stomach the idea of a President of who is Muslim, Jewish, etc. I look forward to the day when all US citizens are grown up enough to support and oppose Presidential candidates for reasons of policy rather than on the basis of their religious beliefs or on the basis of whether candidates wear “magic underwear.”
Jane!!
Union Busting For the Holidays
If Utah is a bust for mid-Dec…There is always Grand Targhee WY, 70″ base and it always snows there.
Amen.
Actually, “sin” sounds about right.
Just so you know; For the New York Times to suggest that Romney selected College Station because of its proximity to Houston (where JFK spoke)to invoke the JFK imagery on religion is ludicrous. Anyone from Texas knows that College Station could not be a more conservative place. Texas A&M university is located there. It has the George H.W. Bush library there. The “80 miles” distance at least demographically couldn’t be more far apart if the cities were divided by an ocean. The NYT is just making crap up to add to a nothing story which nothing more that Mitt Romney gives a speech in Texas.
You can read the NIE in pdf here:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/p…..elease.pdf
It completely blasts the whole “Let’s go to war with Iran” argument out of the water. It will, of course, have no effect on Dick Cheney’s delusions or war mania however.
I agree except that religion has been forcefully injected into politics over the past twenty years or so. In the current environment, there is no way that I would want to see an Evangelical Christian in the WH or on the Supreme Court. Jeebus they just fired a person from the Texas school text book board because she believes in evolution. Mitt didn’t help his situation with his statements about having a Muslim in his cabinet.
Zackly. And K-Lo thinks College Station is in the “Houston area.”
Yikes.
Another similarity. Both Islam and Mormonism hold that the Bible AS WRITTEN is filled with errors introduced after the Catholic Chrutch got its Mitts on it starting about the 2nd century. They thus believe that their own texts brought to their leaders by Angels are more true to the original meaning of Scripture, plus supplements it with the tales of God’s grace to a new “chosen people” living in the desert. Both have more than their share of earlier polygenistic Abrahamian theology in their religion.
So when the fundamentalist got on YouTube/CNN debate and started raving about…”Do you believe THIS!” Romney was being a bit disingenous in saying that he DID. He believes in only SOME of the King James Bible, with a lot of stuff taken out and other interpretations added in.
Mormonism = Scientology in a Conestoga Wagon!
Don’t automatically presume it occurred because of stupidity or an accident.
Consider one hypothesis, what would you do with billions of hot cash taken from Iraq? Want to launder it back into the American economy? How?
Want to buy a lot of cheap houses with cash?
Think how many drug dealers have had to launder ill-gotten cash and bought stuff with cash?
Bush criminality…black market criminality.
This could be wrong of course. It is, after all, just a theory — like evolution.