Yep, certifiable. Maybe he gets it into his head one day that the enemy is possessed and decides that the only way to resolve the issue is by nuclear fire.
In the grand scheme of things yes, but you don’t think that someone following a Jim Jones is somewhat more of a nut than someone following any other more established religion? I think there is a scale here that makes some more irrational than others and we should question their judgment because of it.
I’m very uncomfortable accusing Romney of buying into the Mormon pre-1980 or whatever racism. His father was an outspoken civil rights advocate, and you just don’t grow up in a house where that’s on the menu without having it rub off on you.
This isn’t really about accusing Romney of bigotry. The Left is casting about for something they think will hurt Romney within the Republican party. And since they have this vision of the Republican party as composed mostly of fundamentalist religious bigots, they are hoping that painting Romney as non-Christian will hurt his chances.
Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense - do they think the GOP just hasn’t noticed that one of their front-runners is a Mormon?
As I sai, he is the front-runner, so he gets the treatment. If Jindal moves ahead, he will get the same thing, just based on something else.
Regards,
Shodan
I fail to see how Mormonism is any crazier or any more evil than “mainstream” Christianity. Both are equally crazy and disgusting to me.
This line seems to come down to a straw man. Did Romney specifically identify with any of those things? Or any other crazy stuff? The best I can think of is his dodging a question about creationism in a debate by saying, ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t there’, as if direct personal experience is the only way to settle that question. Obviously it means he has cretinous creationists in his base (like all pubbies) or he wouldn’t dance around the issue, and that can be a reason not to vote for him. But that is just politics.
Attacking Joseph Smith is attacking a straw man. Until Romney starts raving about Mormon beliefs, which I don’t foresee.
I never said he did. But to address the OP, is it a fair question to ask to see if he does?
It seems kind of pointless to say you’re part of a particular religion if you don’t think at least some of the religion has validity, though. At least IMHO. It would be like Der Trihs saying he was a Republican when we all know he doesn’t agree with anything they stand for (whatever that is).
Not for an American politician, where you pretty much have to be officially religious to be electable.
Actually, “the Left” has been significantly silent on this issue.
The OP of this thread is hardly a significant Left winger and the posters piling on from the “anti” position have tended to do so from their views of religion, rather than their politics.
On the other hand, there was a significant amount of Romney bashing during the primaries from the Religious Right.
While I am sure that the Left will welcome any abuse heaped on Romney for his religion if he becomes a candidate, it is not the Left pushing the issue and it will be the Right that gives him the most trouble on the matter if he ever gets the Republican nomination.
tom, didn’t you know “The Left” has a hive mind?
Romney was born into being a Mormon, which gets him a pass in my book. Palin on the other hand chose to be a religious wack job and Huckabee is a fundamentalist preacher. I don’t know what Romney thinks about evolution, but we have lots of Mormons in our town, and none of them are anti-science as far as I can tell.
Not anti-evolution, anyway. Their belief in their scripture pretty much requires them to be anti-archaeology, or at least anti-establishment-archaeology, since they need to put their own unique spin on the findings of archaeology as far as the pre-Columbian Americas go.
He did try to make lame jokes in the last campaign about “believing that marriage is between a man and a woman, and a woman, and a woman.”
The more people saw him in the primaries, the less they liked him, as the results showed. And that’s *Republican *voters. “The Left” (:rolleyes:) should be *happy *to see him the top choice among 2012 hopefuls. Not as happy as if it were Palin, but still.
Except Romney would never believe that, it’s not part of LDS beliefs. Yet you are not opposing Catholics or some fundamentalists who do believe in possession. All religions have beliefs that seem ridiculous to outsiders.
However I haven’t noticed any efforts to force “intelligent archeology” into the schools. I expect Lieberman isn’t any better about Biblical archeology. If we required all beliefs associated with religion to be scientifically factual, we’d wind up with atheists, deists, some really, really liberal Christians, reform Jews, and the Dalai Lama.
I’d be happy because he is reasonably sane (unlike Palin) and he might figure out that the only way to get things done was to move to the middle. The problem might be what we have in California - a Republican executive with no clout with his party in the legislative branch.
Reminds me of the Firesign Theatre album - vote for him for president because you know he’s not insane. That’s pretty rare on the Republican side of things.
He’s had enough trouble convincing the committed conservatives he really was one of them, not a panderer in a nice suit. He doesn’t dare try to re-image himself again, especially not to an electorate that’s been trained to hotly oppose the new national version of Massachusetts Romneycare.
Still, somebody is going to get the nomination.
Where do you get the faintest idea that I’m not? I just rank them differently on the nutjob scale. If some fundamentalist sect thinks that the world will end in fire, then it would be appropriate to ask the person running for election who believes in such nonsense if he thinks it is his duty once elected to light the match. Don’t you think?
Well. God in Its wisdom deigned not to render me a prophet, and so I am unable to state which religious beliefs are correct.
I maintain that we ought not treat Romney like a whackjob. If he ‘re-images’ himself into a whackjob, that would be another story. But if he takes the wheel in 2016, in a post-HCR apocalyptic hellscape, at least he’ll be familiar with the terminology.
And speak clearly.
So, same latitude for a Scientologist? A witch? A satanist? None of these strike you as a little loopy and make you question their judgment and want to ask them questions about why they believe in such things? Wow.
Huh?
Well, Bush spoke like Porky Pig. Romney doesn’t do that.