Posted on 03/07/2012 10:47:20 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Mitt Romney can't win Evangelical voters.
Throughout the primaries Romney wins rich voters, and often wins voters with extremely low incomes. He wins moderates, and in some states–like Arizona– he has won very conservative voters too. Romney is winning Catholic voters in almost every state. And he wins older voters too.
But over and over again on Super Tuesday, Romney lost the Evangelical vote. He lost them 42-24 to Santorum in Tennessee. He similarly lost those voters 52-19 to Gingrich in Georgia.
No one has really explored why this is. Are they implacably hostile to his Mormonism? Evangelical churches usually classify Romney's Church as a "cult." Are they simply out of touch with Romney because of his wealth- many Evangelicals fall into that income group between 50-100k that has been troublesome for Romney? Or do they simply not trust him on social issues, given his long career of flip flops? Or is it some combination of all this?
Evangelicals have been the key voting bloc for both parties, and are an essential part of the Republican coalition. Romney has to win them over eventually.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
One thing to note :
In Virginia, where he was head-to-head ONLY with Ron Paul, Romney won 62 percent of Evangelicals, consistent with his total vote share. It is probably a sign that when you get Santorum out of the race, Evangelicals could quell their doubts and pull the lever for Romney (albeit maybe reluctantly).
I think that would be the results across the board if rick got out.
Ask Clintoon if they had any effect in 1994.
Unfortunately, if it is Mittens, the gun owners that usually vote will vote for him out of necessity, but they'll make no effort to get anyone else to vote for him. For results of such a scenario, see also, Dole, 1996, McLame 2008.
Why are Mormons voting overwhelmingly Romney? This cuts both ways.
Precisely, it pisses me off fox and cnn keep talking about this, but never mention the mormon vote.
My church doesn’t consider Mormons to be Christians. It is on their website www.Mormon.org It says taht Jesus and Lucifer were both created by God. At my church we are taught that in the beginning was the Word, and Jesus is the Word made flesh. That Jesus was there at the beginning of creation, part of the Triune God.
Let me get this straight (and correct me of I am wrong) — you will not vote for a Mormon (no matter how competent) because of the religious doctrine he subscribes to?
I could vote for a maggot from my trash above Obama, but that doesn’t mean I’d like it or that the maggot would be good for the country.
What Obamacare did to the Catholic Church is just a repeat of what Mitt Romney personally did to the Catholic Church: wield the government sword to force a religious body - including charities that are supported by the parishioners’ offerings, donations, and tithes - to pay for and perform abortions which they believe to be murder (probably because it is).
Government establishment of religion is unconstitutional and sets the stage for sharia. In fact, in Obamacare Muslims are exempt based on conscience but Christians are not exempt based on conscience. IOW, Christians pay a dhimmi tax that Muslims don’t have to pay because the government favors Islam. And all these feminazis need to realize that if the government does the sharia thing, it would TRULY be a “war against women”. Yet their own argument is setting the stage for precisely that.
Analyzing that takes a little bit of concentration and diligence, though, and sadly, it seems that is too much for most voters, regardless of their religious affiliation. Those who haven’t analyzed this have a DUTY to not vote.
This Catholic isn’t voting for Romney.
In terms of population, there are 5.5 Million Mormons in the USA.
Counting Evangelicals is a bit more difficult as there is not one headquarter or centralized place that gives us a number.
Given the imprecision involved in defining exactly what–or who–an evangelical is, it is no surprise that it is extremely difficult to establish a precise estimate of their exact numbers in the United States. With so many different evangelical denominations, thousands upon thousands of independent evangelical churches, evangelical constituencies of varying sizes within historically evangelical “mainline” Protestant and even inside non-evangelical denominations, there is no single entity that can possibly serve as a representative gatekeeper (or census-taker) for the movement.
For this reason, the best approach to an evangelical headcount is a judicious triangulation of various polling and survey data. So, Estimates of the number of evangelicals in the United States, therefore, are just that: estimates.
Based on this, according to a study by Wheaton College, when one lays a number of different studies side-by-side and considers the fact that many Americans could be described as “cultural evangelicals” (particularly within the African-American and Southern white populations), a general estimate of the nation’s evangelicals could safely be said to range somewhere between 30-35% of the population, or about 90-100 million Americans.
If the above number is valid, then we have 16 times more Evangelicals than Mormons.
That’s a huge chunk of voters that Romney needs to woo.
Although I find the Mormon religion to be very 'unusual' ... my primary objection to Mr. Romney is that he doesn't seem to contain a single Conservative atom within his being. Neither social or fiscal. He'll be another go along to get along RINO, and do nothing to inspire change to the structural problems of our Country - both social and fiscal.
Newt Gingrich has the fire in the belly and ability to communicate Conservative ideas.
Santorum can be trusted to uphold socially conservative positions. He appears to have too much of that 'Bush' compassionate conservatism (i.e., supporter of Big Government) about him, but I could vote for him (and hope I'm wrong about his fiscal positions).
But Romney? Sure, he's better than the current pResident (and so would be most people picked at random from this Country), but I doubt I'd vote for him in the General. If the Republican Party wants to put him up as their candidate - they need to go the way of the Whigs...
“...you will not vote for a Mormon (no matter how competent) because of the religious doctrine he subscribes to?”
For me and as to Romney, it doesn’t play much of a role. But for the secular humanist religion or the green religion, I would vote against them because of their worldview. Their worldview produces consistently wrong decisions on matters of public policy.
Mormons usually have, in my experience, a pretty realistic worldview on matters of public policy. What is puzzling to me is how Romney managed to completely avoid that sensible worldview and become a techno-progressive, largely indistinguishable in his public actions from secular humanists. I have the same puzzlement, though, about Catholic politicians like Kennedy, Pelosi and Kerry.
That is true. Why? Because I know what goes on inside the Temple and what it reveals about Mitt's basic beliefs.
They are all addicts. No better than any heroin junkie and probably much worse. Yeah. Much worse. Heroin addicts do harm on a small scale. These other fools can (and do) harm millions of people.
Look, it’s really very simple. Evangelicals are subgroup of Protestants. They are generally highly committed Protestants. Nominal Protestants, Christmas and Easter Methodists or Presbyterians etc. are voting for Romney if they are voting Pubbly.
Nominal Catholics are voting for Romney. Committed Catholics are going for Santorum.
“The Catholic Vote” is an illusion just as “The Protestant Vote” is an illusion.
Break either one down into meaningful categories (frequent church attenders, for instance) and you’ll see that, yes, the majority of some Catholics are voting for Romney and the majority of other Catholics is not.
But the pundits are trying to use this to discredit Santorum. It’s a cheap shot, but apparently works with FReepers who can’t be bothered to think it through or who already have it in for “Catholics” (”All Catholics are liberal socialists” is a meme that’s been ubiquitous on FR the last few weeks. It’s not true, but since when does that matter to anyone.)
There’s a world of difference between my friendly, helpful Morman neighbor, and the Morman hierarchy.
Do a web search on Mormon Mafia. Out of 50 articles throw out 25 as doubtful. Give some thought to the 25 plausible.
That’s the shortest path to trying to explain what anyone who has lived in a Mormon community comes to see, just by living there.
Trust us, if Romney is elected he will bring the Morman Mafia with him.
It will make it very, very hard to vote for Romney, the white Obama.
Let me get this straight (and correct me of I am wrong) — you will not vote for a Mormon Muslim (no matter how competent) because of the religious doctrine he subscribes to?
RE: Let me get this straight (and correct me of I am wrong) — you will not vote for a Mormon/Muslim (no matter how competent) because of the religious doctrine he subscribes to?
__________________________
I will answer the above question in terms of both Mormon and Muslim taking their religion SERIOUSLY as a lifestyle. One taking both the Bible and the Book of Mormon as Sacred Scripture, the other taking the Quran as sacred scripture.
Mormon, yes because his religious doctrine, if taken seriously allows for the separation of the secular and the sacred, the separation of church and state. Plus, they still follow the moral the teachings of Jesus Christ seriously.
Muslim, NO because his religious doctrine, if taken seriously leads to THEOCRACY and NO separation of church and state. Plus, a literal following of Mohammad’s teachings inevitably leads to conflict with the First Amendment.
The reason that Mitt Romney isn't getting traction among Evangelicals is that these people know their Bibles and can use them to evaluate Mormonism. When evaluated on Biblical standards, Mormonism falls very short. Mormonism declared war on evangelical Christianity from its formation and attacks everything that true Christians hold dear. We evangelicals won't be persuaded by arguments that Mormons are just Christians like you because they say they are Christians or they are so nice. We are aware that the Bibles warns us about "wolves in sheep's clothing." To evangelicals, loyalty to Christ and His Church is more important than loyalty to conservatism and far more important than loyalty to the Republican Party.
Given his political views, I wouldn't vote for Romney if he were an evangelical Christian so his Mormonism wasn't really a factor. If Romney were the modern Ronald Reagan rather than the modern Nelson Rockefeller, I might have a dilemma but as it stands now, I don't.
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