Posted on 6/22/2007, 6:49:24 PM by Utah Girl
Implies link to terrorists, Taliban-like persecution of women
WASHINGTON - Prominent Mormon supporters of Sen. John McCain's presidential bid were outraged at a campaign worker's attempt to link the LDS Church to terrorists.
Chad Workman, the Warren County, Iowa, chairman of McCain's campaign, addressed a gathering of Republican activists in April and questioned whether Mormons were Christians. But he went much further, discussing an article alleging the LDS Church helps fund Hamas, and associating the treatment of Mormon women with the Taliban, according to a report in Thursday's Boston Globe.
Workman's comments were a direct attack against rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is viewed by some evangelicals as outside the mainstream, and in some cases, as a cult.
"I think that's reprehensible," said state Sen. Curtis Bramble, a Mormon who recently switched from backing Romney to supporting McCain. "You can't control all of your volunteers [but] this would cause me very serious concern. I don't think there's room for that rhetoric in the campaign. Period."
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who is heading up McCain's efforts in Utah, said he would personally talk to McCain and ask him to take action against Workman if the anti-Mormon report is true.
"I'm going to ask him to send out a message from campaign headquarters that no one from his organization should say things like that," Shurtleff said.
A top Romney supporter in Utah called for Workman to be axed from McCain's campaign.
"I know that McCain does not believe that and would never sanction it," said Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics and one-time head of Romney's former political action committee, the Commonwealth PAC.
McCain "needs to remove [Workman] from having any position within the campaign, any status from within the campaign."
McCain himself has denounced attacks against Romney's religion or anyone else's in the campaign. During a visit to Salt Lake City earlier this year, McCain was asked what he would tell supporters of his that were bashing Romney's Mormonism.
"I would make the most forceful statement possible that there is no place in American life for that, much less politics," McCain said.
McCain spokesman Danny Diaz said Thursday that the campaign has apologized to Romney and "reiterated that comments concerning his religion are inappropriate and unacceptable."
McCain and Romney have ramped up their attacks on each other in recent months as both seek support in early primary contest states. Romney has bumped into the lead in two of the three early states as McCain has lost ground, according to polls.
Romney spokesman Kevin Madden says targeting a candidate because of his or her faith is "absolutely uncalled for."
"It's important that Sen. McCain apologize for these types of attacks coming from his campaign," Madden said. "I'd expect that Sen. McCain's supporters in Utah are just as disappointed as we are that their campaign has resorted to this kind of repugnant behavior."
The revelation of the McCain supporter's comments is part of a spate of attacks against Mormonism of late, including implications or forwarding of anti-Mormon rhetoric by the Rev. Al Sharpton, and staffers for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback.
All three apologized to Romney and LDS Church leaders.
How come Dingy Harry’s Mormon faith gets a pass but Romney’s is a cause celebre?
McCain and his campaign staff don’t know how to campaign without sniping at someone. It’s their nature.
I peg the over/under on when McCain as the net thrown on him as July 20.
In before the anti-mormon zealots
Darn, they found us out. Frankly, I am surprised that it took this long for someone to notice the burkas that we force our women to wear. Whatever shall we do now?
The McCain rolling trainwreck keeps plodding ahead steadliy on it’s journey to tracks sunk in quicksand
What did the guy actually say? This article doesn’t tell us.
Bruce Dern was on the Bob Costas radio show a few weeks ago and he made the statement “you can’t believe a word that a Mormon says”. Costas didn’t blink. I wonder if Dern had said Jew or Black would Costas have called him on it?
Because Reid is a MINO (Mormon in Name Only).
Hopefully all the Mormon bashing will end up helping MR as the word gets out about the unfairness and meanness of it all.
I’m a female Mormon and no one who knows my record would dare call me a Taliban-like beaten down woman. In fact, they used to call me “the destroyer” because of my fierce conservative activities. Remember, I’m the one who called Willie Brown “Clinton’s shoe shiner”.
The McCain campaign is on life support. You’ll see some crazy stuff coming out of it now.
How come Dingy Harry’s Mormon faith gets a pass but Romney’s is a cause celebre?
“associating the treatment of Mormon women with the Taliban,”
The irony here is that the Democrats have no problem with Muslim treatment of women and are strangely silent when Muslim women are beaten for allowing themselves to be raped. But Mormon men are taught to open doors for women-now there’s something to get hysterical about.
There was no blogosphere back in 1976. The media agreed that it would be impolite to discuss it, as they remembered the religion question loomed large during JFK's candidacy. If the blogosphere were not discussing it, the MSM wouldn't either.
I have a feeling that for as long as Mitt's in this, we are going to see quite a bit of this sort of ugliness. I've expressed before that I hope Obama's supporters are spitting mad at Hillary after next summer's convention, when she steals the nomination from him, but I'm sorely afraid that our conservative LDS bretheren will feel that way towards a non-Romney nominee, when this whole thing is over.
Good point.
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