A Tale of Two Presidential Candidates

[ITR_champion]

For a part of his life, Ron Paul openly associated with racist people and organizations. The most famous instance of this was his newsletters, published with his name in huge letters at the top. Lesser known are facts like this:

Eric Dondero, Paul’s estranged former volunteer and personal aide, worked for Paul on and off between 1987 and 2004 (back when he was named “Eric Rittberg”), and since the Iraq war has become one of the congressman’s most vociferous and notorious critics. By Dondero’s account, Paul’s inner circle learned between his congressional stints that “the wilder they got, the more bombastic they got with it, the more the checks came in. You think the newsletters were bad? The fundraising letters were just insane from that period.” Cato Institute President Ed Crane told reason he recalls a conversation from some time in the late 1980s in which Paul claimed that his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto until it folded in 2001.

Whenever the topic is brought up, Paul and his supporters respond with two lines of argument. First, Paul didn’t personally write the newsletters and his personal record in Congress isn’t racist. (Just don’t ask about his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, please.) Second, all that was a long time ago, so it’s not relevant now. But most opinion pieces that I’ve seen addressing the issue agree that these responses are inadequate. The article I linked to comes from Reason, a libertarian magazine generally leaning in Paul’s favor, but even they don’t accept Paul’s dismissal of the issue.

For a large part of his life, Mitt Romney openly associated with a racist organization, namely the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, hereinafter the LDS Church. The most famous instance of this organizations racism was banning blacks from the priesthood until 1978, a policy that LDS leaders explained many times was because they believed dark skin to be a sign of moral inferiority. But in addition to banning blacks from the priesthood, the LDS Church took an active stance against rights for blacks and decent societal treatment of blacks, even within Romney’s lifetime. Mormon Apostle Mark E. Peterson said:

The reason that one would lose his blessings by marrying a Negro is due to the restriction placed upon them. “No person having the least particle of Negro blood can hold the Priesthood” (Brigham Young). It does not matter if they are one-sixth Negro or one-hundred and sixth, the curse of no Priesthood is the same. … The Lord segregated the people both as to blood and place of residence. At least in the cases of the Lamanites and the Negro we have the definite word of the Lord Himself that he placed a dark skin upon them as a curse – as a punishment and as a sign to all others. He forbade intermarriage with them under threat of extension of the curse

Former LDS President Ezra Taft Benson said this as recently as 1967:

Negroes … are merely the unfortunate group that has been selected by professional Communist agitators to be used as the primary source of cannon fodder. Not one in a thousand Americans – black or white – really understands the full implications of today’s civil rights agitation. The planning, direction, and leadership come from the Communists, and most of those are white men who fully intend to destroy America by spilling Negro blood, rather than their own.

Peterson again:

I think I have read enough to give you an idea of what the Negro is after. He is not just seeking the opportunity of sitting down in a cafe where white people eat. He isn’t just trying to ride on the same streetcar or the same Pullman car with white people. It isn’t that he just desires to go to the same theater as the white people. From this, and other interviews I have read, it appears that the Negro seeks absorption with the white race. He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage. That is his objective and we must face it. We must not allow our feelings to carry us away, nor must we feel so sorry for Negroes that we will open our arms and embrace them with everything we have.

So to me it looks like Ron Paul and Mitt Romney are in the same boat, having been openly and voluntarily taking part in racist organizations a few decades ago. However, the tide of opinion flows in opposite directions for the two candidates. Most opinion pieces I’ve read tell me not to care about Romney’s association with the LDS Church in its racist days. The reasons, when any are given, are basically the same ones Ron Paul gives: it was a long time ago and Romney’s personal record isn’t racist. Why would anyone accept these reasons for Romney but not for Paul?

[Marley23]

Moved to Elections from Great Debates.

[Captain_Amazing]

I think the difference is that Mitt Romney was a rank and file member of an organization (the LDS church) whose racism was incidental to its purpose. Ron Paul, on the other hand, was in a leadership position where he actively chose to appeal to the racism of racist groups. I think that’s the big difference.

For instance, also in this race, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman, when they were kids, were Boy Scouts (with both Perry and Huntsman becoming Eagle Scouts), as were a lot of other people growing up. The Boy Scouts of America have taken positions against gays and atheists being members, and don’t let openly gay people or open atheists in. But you can’t say that Romney, Perry, and Huntsman (or any of the millions of American men who are or were involved in Scouting) are necessarily anti-atheist or anti-gay for that reason. (Some of them are, of course, and Rick Perry, especially, in this campaign, has taken stances indicating he doesn’t think much of either gays or atheists, but that’s beside the point.)

[Strassia]

Two main answers, I believe: 1) in the U.S. we do not necessarily hold all the positions of a person’s church against them. Should pro-choice liberals have rejected Teddy Kennedy because he was a practicing Catholic? Most people do not actively choose their churches, they go where their parents go. 2) Mitt Romney never, as far as I know, actively supported, courted, or lent his name to the racist cause. If the press found a copy of statement supporting the racist LDS position with Romney’s name on it, it would make it more equitable.

So in the eyes of most Americans the two are not the same.

[Ravenman]

Tim Russert asked Romney in 2007 about the issue of race in the LDS church.

RUSSERT: … You were 31 years old, and your church was excluding blacks from full participation. Didn’t you think, “What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?”

GOV. ROMNEY: I’m very proud of my faith, and it’s the faith of my fathers, and I certainly believe that it is a, a faith–well, it’s true and I love my faith. And I’m not going to distance myself in any way from my faith. But you can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at, at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mm was a tireless crusader for civil rights. You may recall that my dad walked out of the Republican convention in 1964 in San Francisco in part because Barry Goldwater, in his speech, gave my dad the impression that he was someone who was going to be weak on civil rights. So my dad’s reputation, my mom’s and my own has always been one of reaching out to people and not discriminating based upon race or anything else. And so those are my fundamental core beliefs, and I was anxious to see a change in, in my church.

I can remember when, when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from, I think, it was law school, but I was driving home, going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio, and I pulled over and, and literally wept. Even at this day it’s emotional, and so it’s very deep and fundamental in my, in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God. My faith has always told me that. My faith has also always told me that, in the eyes of God, every individual was, was merited the, the fullest degree of happiness in the hereafter, and I, and I had no question in my mind that African-Americans and, and blacks generally, would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons.

MR. RUSSERT: But it was wrong for your faith to exclude it for as long as it did.

GOV. ROMNEY: I’ve told you exactly where I stand. My view is that there–there’s, there’s no discrimination in the eyes of God, and I could not have been more pleased than to see the change that occurred.

Now, someone can choose to take Romney at his word or not. However, his answer may not be fully satisfying, but at least it sounds plausible as to what actually may have happened. Nobody can say that Ron Paul’s responses to questions about his newsletter sound plausible.

Romney essentially said that he wanted to see he church change and was really happy when it did. Ron Paul says that he didn’t write the racist articles, he doesn’t know who wrote them, and it is unfair to ask him about the articles.

Without any further evidence against Romney, I think I’m willing to take him at his word; whereas Ron Paul’s story just seems either like a coverup or a matter of gross incompetence.

[Ibn_Warraq]

To add to the excellent answers already provided, while I’m no fan of the previous policy of the LDS Church had of prohibiting black people from becoming priests, I don’t think it’s morally worse than the position of the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism and Orthodox Islam that women not be allowed to be Priests/Rabbis/Imams.

[Simplicio]

@Ibn_Warraq

To add to the excellent answers already provided, while I’m no fan of the previous policy of the LDS Church had of prohibiting black people from becoming priests, I don’t think it’s morally worse than the position of the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism and Orthodox Islam that women not be allowed to be Priests/Rabbis/Imams.

Its a little worse. My understanding is that the priesthood in Mormonism basically just means a (male) member in good standing. Its closer to being a communicant of the Catholic Church then being a Catholic Priest.

So black men were forbidden from participating in LDS at a much lower level then woman in the Catholic Church.

But even with that, I agree with the general sentiment that I wouldn’t hold the racist views of Romney’s Church when he was in his 20’s against him, while I also agree Paul’s racist writings are more disturbing.

[Steve_MB]

Yeah, I recall how disgusted I was at those obnoxious newsletters published under Romney’s name… oh, wait… that never happened at all because he didn’t do that.

[Chronos]

Ron Paul personally espoused racism. He says he didn’t, but the simple fact is that those newsletters had his name on them, with his permission. By allowing the newsletters to be printed under his name, he assumes full responsibility for what was printed in them. If he wasn’t sure what was being printed in them, he shouldn’t have assumed that responsibility.

Mitt Romney has, in this matter, only guilt by association, not direct guilt. He had no authority to change the policies of his church.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

By this logic Catholics should not be allowed to hold office due to the past history of the Inquisition. :rolleyes::dubious:

[Frank]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

By this logic Catholics should not be allowed to hold office due to the past history of the Inquisition. :rolleyes::dubious:

You’ve made it clear in past post that Martin Luther saved the world from the Pope. When did you change your mind?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Frank

You’ve made it clear in past post that Martin Luther saved the world from the Pope. When did you change your mind?

That is because at that time the Catholic Church was corrupt, theologically in severe error, and intolerant. On the first and the third points it has reformed. And at any rate religion has little impact on whether a candidate is competent or not,

[Simplicio]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

By this logic Catholics should not be allowed to hold office due to the past history of the Inquisition. :rolleyes::dubious:

There’s a difference between being part of an organization that did bad things 400 years ago and one that did bad things while you were part of it

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Simplicio

There’s a difference between being part of an organization that did bad things 400 years ago and one that did bad things while you were part of it

So like the Democratic Party pre Civil Rights Bill? If this is true than Robert Byrd who actually was part of the KKK should not have been Senator. All the actions of Mr. Romney and his father show that they are not racists whatever their church may believe.

[Love_Rhombus]

Yet another disgusting item with Ron Paul’s name on it, of which he claims no connection.

Really? His kids? That’s just slimy.

[Chronos]

That’s not “has Ron Paul’s name on it”, that’s “has Ron Paul’s name in it”. Any old yahoo can put up an ad that says “Vote Ron Paul”, but they couldn’t air an ad without the familiar “I’m Ron Paul and I approve this ad” without his support. When you see an ad like that, it’s even money that it was actually put out by the opponents of the politician in question, as a false-flag operation to make him look bad.

[Ravenman]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

If this is true than Robert Byrd who actually was part of the KKK should not have been Senator.

You know, it is pretty bizarre that you condemn Byrd in such terms for having joined the Klan sixty years ago and apologized many times for it; and yet you also call an authoritarian like Putin the greatest leader on the world stage.

I think your judgment on political leaders is 180 degrees off.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Ravenman

You know, it is pretty bizarre that you condemn Byrd in such terms for having joined the Klan sixty years ago and apologized many times for it; and yet you also call an authoritarian like Putin the greatest leader on the world stage.

I think your judgment on political leaders is 180 degrees off.

I mean while Byrd at least had a past history of racism, Romney does not at all. His father fought for civil rights as governor.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Chronos

That’s not “has Ron Paul’s name on it”, that’s “has Ron Paul’s name in it”. Any old yahoo can put up an ad that says “Vote Ron Paul”, but they couldn’t air an ad without the familiar “I’m Ron Paul and I approve this ad” without his support. When you see an ad like that, it’s even money that it was actually put out by the opponents of the politician in question, as a false-flag operation to make him look bad.

Obviously Ron Paul would not want his name on it. The problem isn’t Ron Paul but that he’s support base is the most diverse among anything presidential candidate in history including white nationalists, paleocons, Christian theonomists, normal libertarians, far leftists, left libertarians, and so on but a large chunk of his supporters are extremenists or nutters of some sort.

[DianaG]

@Simplicio

There’s a difference between being part of an organization that did bad things 400 years ago and one that did bad things while you were part of it

So by this logic Catholics should be presumed to support child rape.

In all seriousness, I have issues with Romney’s religion only because he’s used religion as an argument against gay marriage, which I think is pretty hilarious when you belong to a religion that has historically regarded marriage as between (well, among) one man and as many barely pubescent girls as he’s able to acquire.

That said, as previously noted Romney’s association with LDS just is, he’s not espousing any particularly Mormon principles, and to my knowledge is not especially active in the church. He’s Mormon like Ted Kennedy was Catholic. No big. Now, if he were to put out a newsletter espousing racism and polygamy, that’d be bad, mkay?