Mormon Mitt Romney's Presidential Problems
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published February 8, 2007, 3:04 pm in News, Voting & Partisanship.
Mitt Romney doesn't have a chance. Not if the polls concerning religion in politics are correct. He ought to go ahead and drop out now.
Romney is the former Massachusetts governor who is now trying to court social conservatives to get the Republican nomination. Yes, that's right: he was a Republican governor or Massachursetts. But he's no George W. Bush Republican. Romney has supported abortion rights and gay rights, whereas Bush staked his elections on opposing these very things.
But now Romney wants the presidential nomination, and it seems that any contender needs to court the social conservatives. You can't win South Carolina, after all, if you can't get the social conservative vote. Sure, there are other types of conservatives--the county club Republicans, for instance--but I don't think it's possible to get the nomination nod without appealing to each conservative group. So Romney is trying to do that. He's trying to remake his image into a social conservative. Heck, he spoke in Aiken, South Carolina of all god-forsaken places. Trust me, I know. I used to live in South Carolina and I dated a girl from Aiken. It was short-lived to say the least. So I know how socially conservative these places are, and Romney is obviously trying to remold himself.
And it won't make a bit of difference.
Romney doesn't have a chance, no matter if he were an actual social conservative. The real problem is that he's Mormon.
Now I'm not saying anything against Mormons. There are plenty of other websites out there that do that. What I'm talking about are his chances for the presidency, and his Mormonism rules him out. I don't care if it were Mitt Romney vs. John McCain for the nomination. Even then, even though social conservatives are very leery of McCain, even then they would go for him over Romney.
What's wrong with a Mormon for president, you may ask. And I may answer "nothing." But ask an evangelical Christian, and he or she is likely to tell you that Mormons are not Christians. I know this is anathema to most Democrats, I mean atheists out there. Heck, to them, a Christian is a Mormon is a Muslim. Well, maybe not a Muslim; they're often put in a category of their own after 9/11. Hence all the hubbub about whether Obama is a Muslim or not. Now I'm not that familiar with Mormonism, but from what I know, the views are a bit different from Christianity. I'm not sure of the details exactly, and I don't want to get into doctrine here, but there are some pretty big differences.
Hence why the Southern Baptist Convention lists Mormonism as a cult. Crazy, huh? Not for evangelicals.
But Romney has not always the beliefs of his religion. When he stood for abortion and gay rights, he was in contrast to the offical Mormon doctrine. Does this mean anything? I don't know. I wouldn't say anything if George Bush changed to support abortion rights, even if that did contradict a lot of evangelicals' beliefs. But there is a difference here between Christianity and Mormonism. (Don't you like this? I said that I didn't want to go into doctrine, and here I am, going into doctrine...) Christianity is a multi-faceted religion. There are Christian organizations that support gay rights and there are those that do not. Where do they both go for guidance? The Bible. They both use the Bible to support their views. The Bible is the revelation of God, according to evangelicals. Many evangelicals resist the notion that God still reveals himself to mankind in the way that he did during the time of the Bible. During that time, God would speak to prophets, and these prophets would then speak the words of God. That's what most of the books of the Old Testament are: the laws of God and the prophets. The words of the prophets were the same as the written revelation--the Bible--because God revealed himself in these two forms. If there are prophets today who have the direct words of God and speak those words, then they are infallible, and every Christian should follow them. Now this doesn't mean that individual Christians don't have "revelations" or that God doesn't reveal things to them, but it's not quite as clear cut for most evangelicals.
Mormons believes that their leader is a prophet. That means that he has direct revelation from God. Which means that anything he says is on par with the other type of revelation, the Bible (or the Mormon book). So if the Mormon prophet says that God told him that every Mormon should do whatever, they would be obliged to do it. Otherwise, they would be disobeying God.
For most evangelicals, that idea alone puts a damper on the idea of a Mormon as president.
Romney has disagreed with his religion, of course, which may be a good thing, I'm not sure, but his image is still as a Mormon. Opinion polls show that many Americans would not vote for a Mormon even if the candidate did embody all of the person's correct agenda. Almost a quarter of respondents said that wouldn't vote for Romney because he is a Mormon. Now some of them probably wouldn't vote for him anyway, but the same generalized questions make it clear that he will have strikes against him.
Here is a part of the poll listed on NPR.org:
"Percentage of 900 registered voters who said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate for president who is:
Mormon: 32%
Protestant: 6%
Roman Catholic: 10%
Jewish: 10%
A member of the Christian Coalition: 24%
Muslim: 45%
An atheist: 50%
A Scientologist: 53%"
This is probably the most revealing thing of all. Some people react to those who are a part of the Christian Coalition, which is funny, but very few would have a problem with Jewish people. More would have a problem with Mormons, and those people are probably not the same as those who would have a problem with members of the Christian Colition. I would say that it is the Christian Coalition who would have problems with a Mormon. And even more would have problems with Muslims, atheists, and Scientologists. I guess too many people watched the South Park episodes about Scientology, huh?
The demoracy of South Park--now there's an interesting article.
So there are plenty of people who wouldn't have a problem with a Mormon as president, but the problem is that he won't be able to get the nomination. Evangelicals will go for a conservative Christian before they go for a Mormon. So it's a waste for Romney to even enter the ring. He should pull now and not waste anyone's time or money.
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