Romney the Mormon

Many people seem mystified that Romney has felt the need to defend his right to be a Mormon and run for President.

I just look at it as another form of pandering, one that will probably not work very well. Ah, but he needed to do something as Huckabee was daily stealing his bread (and Fred's bread, too) as the evangelist-cum-huckster choice--a role that is guaranteed about 25-30% of the Republican primary vote.

The key point of Romney's speech was his claim that the Mormon church never influenced his policies as Massachusetts governor, so it would never influence him as President. I'll grant that, as President, he'd be more powerful than even the most-senior Elder (Chairman of the Board) of the church in Salt Lake City (he might not have been so in MA), so he wouldn't have to listen to them. What I believed before his speech, and what I still believe, is that Romney consulted the church elders and got their OK to shift his policies some to get the governor job, and then again to get their OK to run for President as a Republican. So his flip-flops, the main item to debate regarding Mitt, would have a subtle church influence under that theory.

I believe this simply because I don't really trust the Avatar of Ken on anything. This, in particular, would be something that he would be stretching the truth about. Is this bigoted?

When it comes to the Mormons themselves, I find their theology, their view of society, and especially their account of the discovery of the Book of Mormon, along with its contents, all absurd in the extreme. About par for the course, I guess. What I can't disparage is their design for living; flexible though it has been, it has always provided for long, untroubled lives; for extensive procreation (one wife or many), and broad proselytizing.

It all makes for an intensely rapid growth rate: it's clearly a winning business model. Perhaps Mitt should go into it in more depth as an example of the competent management along Bushite lines that his campaign wants to promise. It wouldn't sway me, but so many of us want to be part of a winning team, and he can help us to join up on the mystery tour.