Romney attacks Huckabee; and McCain attacks Romney for attacking Huckabee. Marc unpacks the Romney logic here. Here’s the Romney ad:
Larison is unimpressed. He thinks the ad is too wimpy. Byron York thinks McCain just likes Huckabee. It could also be that McCain detests Romney, whatever his past statements of respect. The longer this campaign lasts, the more I see how he feels.
The question was raised in the Dish – in slightly facetious fashion – not as a way to suggest that Getty photographer, Charles Ommanney, did anything but take a picture, but just to suggest that Romney is not beyond a little posture plagiarism. The photo was, however, taken on April 11, 2007. There’s no way this was anything but a coincidence. Just for the record.
Marc says it could be good for Mitt.
A particularly polished paragraph:
According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater? Those who elected to believe this stuff were quite rightly told to expect a hard time, and the expression "fool for God" or "fool for Christ" has been with us ever since. That concept has some dignity and nobility. Entirely lacking in dignity or nobility (or average integrity) is the well-heeled son of a gold-plated church who wants to assume the pained look of martyrdom only when he is asked if he actually believes what he says. A long time ago, Romney took the decision to be a fool for Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud and serial practitioner of statutory rape who at times made war on the United States and whose cult has been made to amend itself several times in order to be considered American at all. We do not require pious lectures on the American founding from such a man, and we are still waiting for some straight answers from him.
Even when one disagrees with Hitch, I find it all but impossible not to enjoy reading him.
Uh-oh. And some actually thought this was an oversight. Who are they kidding apart from themselves?
David zeroes in:
Romney’s job yesterday was to unite social conservatives behind him. If he succeeded, he did it in two ways. He asked people to rally around the best traditions of America’s civic religion. He also asked people to submerge their religious convictions for the sake of solidarity in a culture war without end.
It is, of course, one way to think of Mormonism, but this observation struck me as worthwhile:
[Romney] skilfully presents religion as a much more up-to-date form of nationalism. Mormonism becomes the quintessence of American religious liberty, and this liberty becomes the source of American power. The pilgrim fathers, he allows, fled from England for liberty for themselves, but they would not grant it to other people. Just as early religious dissidents had to flee Massachusetts for Rhode Island, two centuries later Brigham Young had to head out for Utah after Joseph Smith was lynched.
Religious liberty thus becomes the defining feature of American culture in his speech.
And the non-religious are therefore somehow un-American or irrelevant to America.
A reader writes:
I of course do not know who your ‘Mormon reader’ is—and therefore how involved with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the reader actually might be — but s/he gets a number of points wrong:
1) Latter-day Saints are not, nor do they consider themselves to be, polytheists. 2) Latter-day Saints do not reject ‘Salvation by Grace,’ though clearly their understanding of such is closer to a Catholic than to a ‘New Calvinist’ (your Mormon reader’s term) one: access to the grace of Christ requires both belief and the exercise of free will to access that grace through sacraments/ordinances and obedience to Christ’s teachings.
3) Though the Book of Mormon clearly rejects Biblical infallibility, it nowhere contradicts Biblical literalism, reinforcing the literal nature of many parts of the Bible which have come to be seen as figurative by many Christians. In fact, Latter-day Saints are amongst the most literal of Bible believers; for example, they accept the literal reality of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Noachic flood, the existence of Job, etc.
4) LDS bishops do not ‘interview’ and ‘approve every person in their Ward boundaries…who wishes to convert to Mormonism and be baptized.’ This is the work of full-time missionaries, and bishops are actually prohibited from interfering in this process. A bishop may ‘interview’ a potential convert, but this is only to get to know the future member of his congregation. Readiness for baptism is an issue determined exclusively by the missionaries. Bishops do conduct baptismal interviews for ‘children of record’—eight-year-olds who have at least one member parent—in their wards.
5) Bishops do not interview ‘every single member’ of their congregations yearly. Church handbooks recommend that annual interviews occur for young men and women between the ages of 12 and 18, for whom a bishop has especial care, but other ward members may go years without being interviewed by their bishop. Recommends to enter an LDS temple must be renewed every two years, but not all adult Latter-day Saints hold a current temple recommend, and, for those who do, these can be renewed by meeting with one of the bishop’s counsellors.
6) Bishops naturally are considered to have a clear understanding of Latter-day Saint theology, but they are not official spokesmen for the Church. Most stakes (dioceses) have trained Public Affairs Specialists who fulfil this role in their local areas, and the statements of (even) bishops and stake presidents are not considered authoritative proclamations of doctrine.
In short, I suspect that your ‘Mormon reader’ has been disaffected from the Church of Jesus Christ for some time and is perhaps not the most reliable source of information in this regard.
Actually, when you examine this, there isn’t a great deal of dispute here. Mormonism’s view of the Trinity does speak of "individual Gods". Some view this as polytheism. Mormons view the Bible as literal in many respects but also assert that it contains errors. Its view of grace is distinct from fundamentalist Protestantism. And a Bishop would indeed be in a position to explain Mormon theology in great detail, as my first Mormon emailer wrote.
A reader writes:
It’s interesting that when you quoted Romney saying:
Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.
my immediate reaction was to think of those ex-Muslims who have "jettisoned their beliefs" despite the threat of violence or death. Most people I know seem to admire them, not tire of them.
And they chose the world’s doubts over Allah’s certainty, didn’t they?
The Dish 
