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Is Mitt Romney’s Mormonism fair game?
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has developed a simple method to determine whether coverage of the candidate’s Mormonism has crossed a line.
“Our test to see if a similar story would be written about others’ religion is to substitute ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish,’ ” Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul wrote in objection to a Washington Post article last fall about the candidate’s role as a church leader in Boston.
She pointed out a passage that explained a central tenet of Mormonism. It described the belief that Christ’s true church was restored after centuries of apostasy when the 19th-century prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates that he discovered in Upstate New York.
“Would you write this sentence in describing the Jewish faith?” Saul asked in a November e-mail, adding: “ ‘Jews believe their prophet Moses was delivered tablets on a mountain top directly from G-d after he appeared to him in a burning bush.’ Of course not, yet you reference a similar story in Mormonism.”
Oh, this get's worse below the fold...
More from the article:
Now that Romney has secured the necessary delegates to become the Republican nominee, that challenge is front and center. Obama strategist David Axelrod has suggested that Mormonism is off limits as political ammunition. Yet news outlets delve into Mormon apocrypha, and comedian and Democratic super PAC donor Bill Maher launches salvo after salvo against Romney’s faith.
But Romney clearly prefers to talk about his religion on his own terms.
At an event in Wisconsin in April, a man began asking the candidate about some of the more controversial aspects of Mormonism, including its past ban on blacks in the priesthood.
“I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view, but if you have a question, I’ll be happy to answer your question,” Romney said.
“I guess my question is, do you believe it’s a sin for a white man to marry and procreate with a black?” the man asked.
“No,” Romney snapped, turning to the other side of the room. “Next question.”
Many of Romney’s supporters, and even some of his former opponents, have advised against it.
“I would not recommend that,” said former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who beat Romney in the 2008 Iowa caucusesand once had to apologize to his rival for asking if Mormons believed that “Jesus and the devil are brothers.” “For the same reason that a Pentecostal goes out and says, ‘This is what I believe about speaking in tongues’ to a nonbeliever, they are not going to get that. They are going to think, ‘Gosh, that’s something I don’t understand.’ If a person talks about when they pray they really hear God speaking to them, that spooks some people, that just creeps them out. They don’t get it.”
I really don't care if he worships Zuul. This sh*t does not help. FU Romney campaign for playing the "Jew" card... Fuck You.
MSM you keep doing this (hello CNN? MSNBC?) you just keep the memes for Jeremiah going. Wake the fuck up!
We have decades of policy, flip/flops, etc. etc. to go after. Wake the f up!
The MSM is stupid. Stop it, and address the issues...
PS. Sorry for the expletives, I'm really pissed.