If you’ll PM me your address, I’ll see if we can send a couple of nice young men over to remedy that 
The Elders get them young.
I’m also having a little trouble with the idea that a major party candidate for president, one who is currently polling at around 50%, who has a 30% shot (according to FiveThirtyEight) at the Presidency can in any way be regarded as a political failure.
Erd,
Consider the primary competition. Now Romney is the only remaining act for his base.
Crane
Common lore in LDS culture is the “white house prophecy” and anecdotally I will say in my experience many, many LDS in Utah believe that Romney is fulfilling that prophecy.
^^oops, meant “White Horse* Prophecy”, not house*
Glenn Beckhas been known to allude to this “prophecy” when he had his show on Fox. Sadly, my whole Mormon extended family lapped it up.
IMO, I think Mitt, as opposed to John Huntsman or Harry Reid (also Mormons), feels he is “called” though he certainly denies it. He has no interest in public service, he only ran for Governor of Massachusetts as a step to the Presidency. He chose Massachusetts over Utah - where he supposedly ‘saved’ the Olympics (with government money, btw) because Massachusetts would provide a better platform to the Presidency.
And he ran for the Senate in 1994 as a step to a step to the presidency? I remember Romney tried to position himself as a non-career politician during the primaries, and Gingrich slapped him down by saying “the only reason you didn’t become a career politician is you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.”
I find that believable, but he’s not the first politician to make a move like that.
You don’t seem to understand politics. I was a voter in MA at the time and while his poling numbers were low he could certainly have run for a second term and stood a good chance of winning. The idea that he couldn’t run for a second term is flat out wrong. Deval Patrick was a strong candidate so it would have been a tough race but the poll numbers mean very little.
State senator is a relatively minor roll in politics on the national stage. His opponent for the senate seat was Alan Keyes, an out of state ultra conservative candidate with no chance of winning, who was drafted to run because the first candidate dropped out and no one else stepped up. He ran for president with little national notice besides the speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Hillary Clinton was a strong opponent, but so were Romney’s opponents for the nomination. The fact that you don’t like them means very little.
This means nothing. His political expectations were to win the nomination and become president. He’s not Progressive by any reasonable definition. You’re making things up at this point.
A much more reasonable possibility is that he’s a politically ambitious man, who’s father was a governor and made a serious run at the presidency, and has been eying the same roll all his adult life. He won the governor seat as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state and did a reasonable job there. He ran a serious campaign for the nomination once and came pretty close, he ran a better campaign the second time and won. There’s no need to invoke an LDS Mission Call since everything he has done for the past 12 years is clear and consistent.
All your points about him being a failure and spending his own money to run are either mistaken or woefully out of context.
Well yes, if he had the won against Ted Kennedy, IMO, he would have used that as his step to the Presidency. However, he lost and instead ran for Governor - leaving after one term to position himself for the Presidency.
He needed to have been elected to office before trying for the Presidency. The Senate didn’t work out so he changed route. I don’t how trying to get there via the Senate is* a step to step* to the Presidency? Either route was just a platform to get him to the Presidency.
I would not be surprised if Mitt thought that he was called of God. That seems to be not uncommon among other Christian politicians as well.
That said, I have to be one of the most vocal ex-Mormon on the boards. I regularly call BS were I see it. There is absolutely no love lost between me and the Mormon church. I am completely convinced that Joseph Smith was a fraud, fucked his friends’ wives and enriched himself at the expense of the gullible believers. I disdain the current bureaucratic leadership.
But I have studied the history of the church and a better informed than average of what they have done over the course of the last 190 years. I believe that the church would be really happy if he won, and the members would be most ecstatic.
But, IMHO, this OP has less merit than Mitt’s comment on the number of ships in the navy.
Bill Maher has said repeatedly that Romney’s sole purpose in running is to become the first Mormon President. I don’t know if it’s his sole purpose, but to be honest I don’t feel that Romney has given us any other reason. It’s pretty clear he’ll say whatever it takes to win.
And that differentiates him from the majority of other candidates how, exactly?
Interesting timing:
Romney still lags with the female vote so the church has a LDS press release emphasizing women missionaries.
Crane
Republicans always lag with female voters, and that article (not a press release) is from October 22. What makes you think it has anything to do with the election?
wonjct?
From the link:
““Slightly more than half of the applicants are women,” LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter said Monday in a news release”
That’s a press release by an official LDS spokesman.
Crane
Again, so what? What ties this to the election campaign?
Interesting timing by an organization whose founder sought the Presidency.
It’s quite possible that Romney is on a Mission Call. We cannot know since LDS is a secret organization. That’s the problem.
Crane
Oh, it is not quite possible. You’re imagining stuff. Actually, you’re just flat out making up stuff now.
For the first and probably last time, you and I agree on something about Mormonism.