Is Mitt Romney’s love for America a Mormon thing?

The Washington Post ^ | May 11, 2012 | Michelle Boorstein,

[Cincinatus' Wife]

When it comes to American exceptionalism, Mitt Romney is going all in.

His book “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” is a love song to the idea that this country merits “the protection of Providence” and has a singular “calling” to be a beacon for freedom. A major theme for him on the campaign trail is the nation’s divine destiny, a heritage Romney said has made him “stand a little taller, a little straighter” when overseas.

But what Romney doesn’t say is that, for followers of his made-in-America religion, Mormonism, exceptionalism isn’t political metaphor. It’s theology.

The faith’s sacred text, the Book of Mormon, describes the United States as “a land of promise . . . a land which is choice above all other lands.” It describes Jesus coming down from heaven, to America, and teaching to people there. Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founder and prophet, quotes God as saying that he established the U.S. Constitution. Mormons’ Garden of Eden is in Missouri. Their version of the hajj begins in Upstate New York and ends in Illinois.

Other post-Reagan candidates may passionately preach beliefs like Romney’s, but he’s the only one who can say American exceptionalism is his religion.

Except he doesn’t.

.........Romney’s reticence on the subject of God and country makes him a typical Mormon. Persecuted by the government in the 1800s, Mormons grew wary of how to merge their faith with their love for the land it blesses....

[af_vet_rr]

300,000,000 million people in the country and the two Washington parties come up with the weirdest fringe freaks in our history, and at the same time.

It really does make you wonder how the two main parties can produce candidates who are pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, and pro-gun control and who would like to take us down the road to socialism.

[ansel12]

300,000,000 million people in the country and the two Washington parties come up with the weirdest fringe freaks in our history, and at the same time.

Ain't that the truth.

In regards to redefining marriage for instance, think about it.

We have a Mormon Bishop, of a royal family of the original founders of a polygamous cult of which he is a prominent leader and representitive, that threw out the biblical definition of “one man, one woman” as wrong, and unbiblical.

He will be defending our position on why "one man, one woman" is a bible absolute, and cannot be challenged.

I hope that he is not asked any awkward questions regarding how his church leadership met the challenges of the Christian opposition to their pro-redefining marriage arguments not so long ago.

[ansel12]

If the actions of one in the past color someone in the future, then all Catholics are as dirty as hell. Just sayin'.

Were our fellow American Catholics doing a lot of that sort of thing here in America, 60 years before Reagan was born?

[Little Bill]

My Fathers family is LDS and WE have fought in EVERY WAR This Country has engaged in from 1776 until last week.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Too bad Willard and his family thinks military service is for suckers and peons.

[Conservative Vermont Vet]

Well, I'm glad I don't have to go to such sites as Dummy Underground, DailyKossak Kids, Media Matters, etc. to get my dose of Hate Romney/Mormons attack pieces; all I have to do (of late) is peruse the posting of a few Freepers and it is deja vu all over again.

Yep, lets try and convince as many CONSERVATIVE Freepers to stay home and/or write in another candidate's name out of "principles" and if and when Dear Leader is re-elected, well, we can always rest comfortably knowing we did our little part in keeping that eeeevil, rabid, despicable, hate-filled MONSTER, Mitt Romney from having had a chance to do what Barack Hussein Obama already has been doing for the past 3 1/2 years (THOUGH NOTHING IN ROMNEY'S BACKGROUND THRU WORDS OR DEEDS EVEN HINT AT SAME)......DESTROY our Great Republic.

Makes sense to me. /sarc!

[daniel1212]

What is not being mentioned is the gallant military service of Mormons in the United States - against the US army: http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/bancroftshistoryofutah_chapter19.htm

[The Iceman Cometh]

Were our fellow American Catholics doing a lot of that sort of thing here in America, 60 years before Reagan was born?

Sorry, not being a wise guy, but I'm not sure what your point is.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Cry me a river. Pimp a deceitful Socialist like Willard on a Conservative website and don’t act surprised when people get pissed off.

[ansel12]

See, I didn’t understand your post that seem to be comparing American Catholics to American Mormons.

Post 7 had something about fairly recent American history related to the modern cult, Mormonism, and you said something I didn’t understand, so I asked you if American Catholics were doing the same stuff here as was described about Mormons in post 7 since you seemed to saying so.

Were our fellow American Catholics doing a lot of that sort of thing mentioned in post 7, here in America, 60 years before Reagan was born, like the Mormons were?

[xzins]

my dose of Hate Romney/Mormons attack pieces;

Let's not be political neophytes. Everyone knew that attacks on his Mormonism would be one vulnerability that Romney brought to the table.

Now that it's starting to rear its head we shouldn't be appalled. This is just the beginning of what will be thrown at Romney.

I am no Romney supporter, and I never will be a Romney supporterl. However, it has absolutely nothing to do with his mormonism. That doesn't mean that democrats won't attack his mormonism. Of course they will. They'll attack anything that might peel off even 1% of his potential support.

So, be prepared for a subtle anti-mormon barrage that will sharply escalate between now and november. The same will happen with Romney's wealth, with Romney's Bain Capital years, with his flip/flops....with anything that looks like a vulnerability.

The only rule in this presidential politics game is "win".

[Agamemnon]

What you are saying is that he has no principles whatsoever.

I write this:

"I think we might all be surprised to see how much of a core conservatism might actually reside there."

And you write that?

Romney might actually be a stealth candidate from the right and you are worried about him not announcing that -- just doing what could be done as he could do it well-behind enemy lines. It's a lot easier to be a vocal outstanding conservative politician in Georgia than in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is a lot like Vichy France: would you have criticized a mayor of a town in the Vichy, who, while he outwardly appeared to support the Nazis actually did what he could do to oppose the totalitarian regime as best he could?

What I am saying is that I speak as one who lived through an era in New England where Kennedy liberalism took a mesmerizing hold of what was once one of the most Republican states in the nation from a time post-Civil War until 1952 when JFK entered the Senate.

You are in California and from what I have read here on FR, also one who left Mormonism for evangelical Christianity. Welcome! I applaud that change of heart and faith walk.

In the last 45 years California was blessed with 2 terms of Reagan as governor (exception being his legalizing abortion); you had Prop 13, Pete Wilson, Prop 187, alot of back and forth with conservatism rising and falling and rising and falling in the arena of CA politics. Orange County is still largely conservative in spite of the loss of Bob Dornan back in the mid - 90's. You are in a real bad spot now, I agree, but I believe you still have a viable conservative opposition in your state.

There is no such viable conservative opposition in MA -- not in the last 45 years of the post-JFK assasination era. MA just got rid of its last Kennedy-in-office vestige when Scott Brown was elected. Understand that. We are truly all operating behind enemy lines up here. With the exception of a few years here and there, I am a native New Englander. To understand what one is able to do in a place like this politically is to live in a place like this.

Romney did about as well as anyone with an (R) next to his name could expect to do in this region. "Romneycare" - a title stuck to him like "Star Wars" was stuck mockingly to Reagan by Kennedy -- that Romney signed was not the terms that were negotiated. But with 90% (D) entrenched in the legislature set to over ride a veto and knowing there was still more to oppose (e.g., Partial birth abortion) you have to pick battles to survive here politically.

I disagree with states mandating the forced purchase of health insurance. I also disagree with State income taxes. Wealth and jobs have flowed away from high tax high mandate states to states that have neither (e.g., Florida and Texas). That said, both rights reside within the purvew of states rights to do so, and this is Federalism.

State legislatures are laboratories. Each state tries programs to learn what works best for them and what doesn't. I suspect that if health insurance is able to be negotiated comepetitively across state lines, those states setting up exchanges and mandating health insurance will eventually dismantle their expensive programs as the populace rises up to call for their elimination.

As far as I am concerned I am hiring a politician to do what I want him to do. That's it. I don't have to like them. I think too many conservatives are trying to make friends of politicians the way parents are too often busy make trying to make their kids their "friends." Result is too often that the kids don't respect the parents and the politicians don't respect the constituents.

I actually think Romney has plenty of good conservative principles even as many Mormons I have met do. I suspect you had sterling ethical principles as Mormon as you have today. My point is you can't tell me that a guy whose religion believes America has something to do with the lost tribes of Israel is going to do something that doesn't affirm American world supremacy. I don't have to agree with the man's religion but if that's what incentivizes him to make sure America's world supremacy is affirmed both economically and militarily, and beacon of freedom, I can support the politician because he is doing what I want.

How many "conservatives" have said they'd do things conservatively and they turn around and disappoint us? Like the parable in Scripture where the guy says he'll plow the field and doesn't vs. the guy who said he wouldn't and has a change of heart and does it. Which one did the Master's bidding?

Similarly, which ever one calling himself conservative and espousing conservatism actually does stuff to move the conservative ball down the field to get into scoring position is the conservative I will support -- regardless of whether he's a Mormon.

I hope that to a significant degrees I can trust (that is not without"Trust but Verify") them to keep their word to me. But that typically takes a constant effort from the grass roots, and the those grass roots have often booted that kind of thing up to politicians to take care of almost exclusively -- and they have been disappointed too many times in the past.

The grass roots must always practice "eternal vigilance" to keep the politicians on the straight and narrow. Unlike any other time in the ast 45 years today I see conservatives motivated to do just that from the grass roots all the way up to the Presidency.

In politics there are trade-offs. The key is to get more of what conservatives want and less of what liberals want. In spite of Bush 1&2 flaws, you must admit that we can thank them both for the evidences of USSC conservatism that still prevail.

MR's smart, and he structured his ground game for this primary long in advance of any of his competitors. He learned from mistakes from prior campaigns even as Reagan did in 1968 and 1976. It's why he is where he is today, and his competitors are not.

On another thread I have presented a possible cabinet selection for Romney, which if he chose to run with it could persuade the likes of Tea Party Patriots to become more enthusiastic campaigners in 2012 than will be the (D) counterparts.

How's this for a novel idea: Run with your proposed cabinet

If you hope to have any of your agenda see the light of day, you have to win first.

I was a Perry guy. He didn't win. I can move on. If, as I have proposed it, I can have the essence of everybody who ran, and create an amalgam of what was useful to the cause of conservatism from everyone of them, I'll have what I want, and I suspect you would too.

By keeping our eyes on the prize, and always remembering that our power is derived from the bottom up, not from the top down, from a unified front, not from a fractured, self-sniping back lot, our larger mass will be in a unique position to dictate our will to the higher ups. That is the way constitutional republicanism works.

Maybe if we can all stop fighting amongst ourselves, and pining for candidates that showed themselves to be singularly incapable of carrying the message long enough to coalesce into that force, we will win the day and take conservatism forward.

If the "cabinet-in-waiting," as I have proposed it, is unleashed into the fray, the debate will continue, and our opposition will wither in the face of it. We use our politicians for what they are good for. Imperfect vessels they may be, but what ever advances conservatism should be our goal.

Pessimism in conservative ranks is merely evidence of DNC success, and I see enough of it around here lately. Let’s cultivate THEIR pessimism, and if they ever thought it was Romney that they wanted to run against, I wouldn’t be surprised if we all someday find out that he actually turned out to be the Trojan Horse within THEIR own midst the whole time as Governor of MA.

FReegards!

[Agamemnon]

Mitt Romney, his father and his mother, all were liberals....

Romney is a tool like any other politician is a tool. He's one of many tools we have to get conservatism to the place where our language is leading the debate, not just left to a few self-satisfied bomb throwers relegated to the back benches somewhere.

I'm hearing Romney responding to the conservative movement, going out of his way to affirm pro-life language in ways I never heard Reagan do with such frequency. I hear the clear articulation of conservatism on many topics – not “perfect” in every possible way, but when is it ever? For the most part sounds good, sounds conservative. Pro-gun, anti-debt, anti-tax, strong defense, strong economy, strong job creation, less regulation, etc. Everything straight out of the Ronald Reagan speech-book -- and then some.

Folksy sounding brain farts in debates a la Perry is not what will win Presidential elections. Clear articulation of conservatism is. You gotta look and sound the part. Gingrich is great in the articulation area – though a bit frumpy in the visuals, and he should be hired to do something significant that requires great locution – like dismantling the Dept. of Education. On the other hand he bounces checks. He’s not the model for business savvy that gets the US off the debt track. Mitt Romney by contrast is. Newt’s not exactly the moral paragon where marital faithfulness is concerned (where Mitt by contrast is) but some people think that key core conservative value can be overlooked. Marital fidelity is essential for a moral leader, but that said I am not looking to hire Newt for a national marriage counselor either. He’s a politician -- good for what he’s good for – put him over at Dep’t of Ed. Let him play to his strength.

Bush 1 and 2 let us down on a lot of things too, you may recall. Margaret Sanger was a family friend of Prescott Bush -- GHWBs father. GHWB and his family were all liberal (R)'s pre-1980. LauraGWB we later found out that for all her children’s ed. stuff, she is not quite so pro-life as we thought she was. Neither are GWB’s daughters who are also more pro-gay post 2008 – at least as bad as Megan McCain. As wonderfully grandmotherly as she is, I don’t think Barbara Bush ever really gave up the Planned Parenthood line but was smart enough to shut up about it. When it came to Desert Storm (Bush 1) or the War on Terror (Bush 2), however, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else in there leading the charge.

When GWB was ready to take on Social Security in 2005 he was abandoned by his own congressional team in the breach, he stood alone. Weakness: too much a patrician in his own right to stick up for himself. Still would have rather had Bush 1&2 over Gore of Kerry – wouldn’t you? Thomas, Roberts and Alito – need any more reasons – in spite of all the GHWB and GWB imperfections? Actually better than any of Reagan’s appointees with the exception of Scalia.

If MR had only 1/2 the people I proposed for cabinet and higher offices (see below), would you prefer to have MR picking USSC justice replacements, or Obama?

How's this for a novel idea: Run with your proposed cabinet

Nixon wanted George to run for that Senate seat to get him out of his administration.

Get a grip. If a President no longer wants someone in his cabinet he has the power to ask for their resignation. Learn the process.

FReegards!

[Tennessee Nana]

From the article

“At the height of tensions over polygamy, when Congress effectively outlawed it in the 1800s, Mormons went to the Supreme Court to argue that the practice was protected under the First Amendment. If polygamy were forbidden, they said, the nation would be abandoning God and his desire for religious freedom.”
_____________________________________________

Now that’s right interesting...

Romney’s family went to the Supreme court to argue for their anti-one man, one woman marriages...

and yet Willie Mitty claims he believes in the “faith of my fathers”...

and the god of his fathers demanded perverted sexual relationships..

Squeaky clean: Mormon style..

[Tennessee Nana]

Massachusetts is a lot like Vichy France: would you have criticized a mayor of a town in the Vichy, who, while he outwardly appeared to support the Nazis actually did what he could do to oppose the totalitarian regime as best he could?
________________________________________

Wee Willie Mitty may be afraid of yucky mean ol guns but nobody was holding one to his head...

His life was never in danger...

Try again...

[ansel12]

Reagan hating- ” Look, I was an independent
during the time of Reagan / Bush.
I’m not trying to return to Reagan/ Bush. ”

You really got it bad for the guy, Romney is a set back for conservatism, his becoming head of the party is a victory for at least a half century of effort by his family to fight conservatism.

Romney was anti-Reagan, his family was anti-Reagan, as late as the 1990s Romney was devoting all donations, and fund raising to democrats and Planned Parenthood, he was a failure as a one term Governor that had to give up his plan to run for reelection.

He is a whack case, here he is on guns: “These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.”

Nixon wanted to usher out George Romney with as little stink as possible.

Wikipedia: “Indeed Nixon, who never had good relations with Romney either personally or on policy grounds, had by then decided he wanted Romney out of his administration but did not want to fire him, and hatched a plot to get Romney to run in the Senate race.[44][45] However, Lenore Romney’s name ended up being mentioned more by Republicans and within the family, even though she professed not to want to run unless no other candidate could be found”

[ansel12]

Romney might actually be a stealth candidate from the right and you are worried about him not announcing that -- just doing what could be done as he could do it well-behind enemy lines. It's a lot easier to be a vocal outstanding conservative politician in Georgia than in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is a lot like Vichy France: would you have criticized a mayor of a town in the Vichy, who, while he outwardly appeared to support the Nazis actually did what he could do to oppose the totalitarian regime as best he could?

Romney was the FOURTH Republican governor in a row, Romney left with 34% approval and was a disaster.

[Psalm 144]

Oops on the math. Should be:

“300,000,000 people in the country and the two Washington parties come up with the weirdest fringe freaks in our history, and at the same time.”

[Agamemnon]

Thank you for your opinion, such as it is, from Tennessee, Nana.

As I wrote to another fellow, I don't expect you to understand the political climate of Massachusetts.

Romney wasn't my first choice either. Better that you get on board with what it's going take to defeat Obama this November.

Postings like yours lack for perspective.

Develop some.

FReegards!

[Agamemnon]

Romney was the FOURTH Republican governor in a row, Romney left with 34% approval and was a disaster.

And the Massachusetts legislature was 90% (D) for all those (R) Governor's administrations too.

OK so what else is it that you fail to understand about trying to govern as a (R) in a State with over 90%(D) legislature?

FReegards!