perfidy

Back to political bloviating, eh? Hadn't noticed. And for the record, my recounting of yesterday's political mail was blind-posted before I even realized you'd reentered the realm of such bloviating. Coincidence? Yeah, most likely.

I'm someone who sees the need for zero affirmative connection between government and religion, while also believing that government shouldn't be affirmatively anti-religious, either. Religion should be treated by our executive overlords as precisely what it is - a personal choice, and we should judge them based on actions, rather than presumed religious undertones.

Much in the way that I don't discuss matters of morality with Carlos, the lawn guy, my religion, shoe color, and musical tastes are part of a long list of things that the government can feel free to shut the fuck up about.

Along those lines, it seems reasonable that we, the people, through our elected representatives of the media (what? we didn't elect them?), ought also to shut the fuck up about candidates choices and preferences, except where the choices they make can clearly have an impact on our future lives under their hobnailed boots.

Romney's chosen religion, as well as Lieberman's and Kennedy's before him, could hardly be less important than it already is. The presumption that decisions are or will be made for religious reasons ignores the way that the government actually works. And, for those who claim, for example, that Bush is a bible-humping fascist, I keep waiting for any indication that he's made a decision or taken any action based on his supposed overt religiosity. Which overt religiosity I doubt, by the way. NTTAWWT.

Orson Scott Card, author, Mormon, and Democrat, has an interesting essay up over at his site the Ornery American.

At least two things in this sentence are false.

The mainstream media have taken a look at Mitt Romney and, just like George W. Bush in 2000, he’s the nightmare candidate for them—the one they have to kill.

I wonder if Card -- or you -- realize that the group gunning for Romney the hardest right now is the Dobson wing of the GOP? No? OK then.

Why? Because he’s exactly what they most fear: A conservative who can appeal to moderates. After all, this guy won an election for governor in Massachusetts. As a Republican.

Um, yeah. Back when he was OK with both abortions and homosexuals. Let's ask him how he feels about both of those now and see how the "moderates" respond.

And, for those who claim, for example, that Bush is a bible-humping fascist, I keep waiting for any indication that he’s made a decision or taken any action based on his supposed overt religiosity.

**coughTerriSchiavocough** Also, the only veto to date has been the stem cell veto. I think both of those are pretty indicative of, if not his own core religious beliefs, his eagerness to pretend.

Schiavo wasn't Bush's doing, but instead was a bi-partisan">http://opinion8.net/comments/170_0_1_0_C/]bi-partisan attempt (bottom half) at, well I'm sure it was an attempt at something, but I've still not figured out precisely what. It wasn't the religious right so much as it was anyone who thought to get mileage out of Schiavo's cause.

As for the latter part, on stem cells, he was nixing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, not the research itself. His reason? There's already federal research on other lines of stem cells, and it's both equally promising and utterly uncontroversial. Pragmatism, not religiosity, and the fact that the evangelicals were happy with the result doesn't make it any less pragmatic, in retrospect.

That said, I'm right there with you regarding his eagerness to pretend, because I remain convinced (and quite comfortable with the fact that) Bush's core religious beliefs mean for marketing than they do for operations.

While I respect Orson Scott Card on the whole, that Ornery American post confirms he's a Democrat, Lieberman or otherwise. Note the reflexive identity-politics play: "It's because he's Mormon, isn't it?"

It's not Romney's Mormon faith that will keep him out of the White House, it's that he's an aggravated serial phony. Far worse, he's a gun-grabbing turd.

Hoover also won by a wide margin, pretty good for a commerce sec'y.

I will also add that, while GOV, Mitt kept going places like South Carolina and giving speeches that consisted of stuff like 'unlike the fags that elected me, you're good people down here.' He doesn't even have the grace to dance with the one what brung him, and that's pretty tacky.

With a raging boner.

Well, as a moderately conservative Mormon myself, my take is pretty close to Orson Scott Cards, but probably a little less optimistic. I'm not sure a Republican can win in 2008, although I expect both McCain and Guiliani to implode. I find myself, in unguarded moments, wishing that Bill Richardson will succeed.

I'm not sure what Phil is rattling on about in his comments, but I know for a fact that Card is a Mormon and an author. He also has consistently claimed to be a Democrat, though he's pretty hawkish and none too liberal. He's basically (as he himself admits) a Lieberman Democrat, and I know many Democrats who hate that. So, whatever.

I'm not that concerned about my religion being ridiculed as weird during the 2008 election cycle because, frankly, some things about it are kind of weird. That's the way it goes with religions, and Mormons shouldn't pretend that their beliefs would appear bland to outsiders.

Greg,
Good point there. As a nondenominational Christian-by-culture-only, pretty much every sect, from Mormons with the underwear to Catholicism with its thinly veiled polytheism and frigging cannibalism, is incredibly strange to me. And don't even get me started on the whole born-again thing.

Phil, and everyone else here, I really don't know much about Mitt. My impression of him was similar to that of Johno's - a haircut in search of a camera. I was going to begin doing some research, and was going to make a crack about him, Edwards and Biden regarding hairdos.

But I honestly was unaware of flipflops. If they are there as you say, sure, I believe you. I'm just starting here with Mitt.

I read the book, Empire, that you mentioned. It's a little thin, really, but it wasn't liberals but leftists. People get upset when I lump those two together, so I imagine that making the distinction for Card is valid also. In the afterward, he goes on at length how lack of civility and discourse is what might lead to that, and that he feels that it is a real problem in our polity.

If the guy says he's a democrat, I believe him, even if he doesn't agree with a lot of democrats.

Re: Picking out the ridiculous bits of a person's religious belief to make the person seem ridiculous.

The religion this doesn't work on is the Quakers. They're serious enough that they don't get the same sort of jokes the Unitarians are hit with, they have a great history of aid and social causes, and their big religious "quirk" is very American egalitarian.

So obviously by this metric a Quaker is the most electable candidate for President. Lets nominate some Quakers everybody!
(Big poly-sci trivia points to whoever gets why this idea is hilarious.)

*cough*Nixon*cough* (stealing a march from Phil)

And as a side note, don't the Unitarians have a fairly light-hearted view of themselves?

Can't see but that they'd have to. They are the mocha latte with foam of religions.

And as far as Quaker electability, Nixon won by a rather wide margin as I recall.

Hmmm, only 50% credit. Yes Nixon, but *before* Nixon there was another Quaker pres... Herbert Hoover. (Who really was a good guy, and got a raw deal on the great depression. Still, not one of the more effective presidents.)

And as a side note, don’t the Unitarians have a fairly light-hearted view of themselves?

Yes, very much so. Way back when I saw the Unitarian Jihad thing right here at Perfidy, and I sent that on to someone in my family who's unitarian. She said she was on the floor laughing, and had forwarded it along to all her friends.

I'll add that Mitt as governor here is kind of interesting for two other reasons:

first, because he was initially crushed for a Senate seat here in 94. I remember the ad, honest to Gaia, that showed him his wife and some rugrat or other in a U Haul truck or something, and his voice explaining that he came from Michigan to Massachusetts to seek the American dream and that he's just like us regular folks. My stepfather went frothy the first time he saw it- I believe he said something like, let me see what was it? Something along the lines of, "WHAT?! HE'S A FUCKING BILLIONAIRE THAT FUCKING SNAKE!!"

Where was I? Oh right- second, because after he did win the coat that said "GOV" on the back, he was never effing here. When that poor lady got crushed by a chunk of overpass last year, it was the most I, or I daresay most, have seen of the gov since he got the gig.

As for his Mormonism, some pundit or other has pointed out that Giuliani has had more wives than Romney.

So what's all this got to do with He who lies dead but dreaming?

I don't want to sound like an auto-contrarian, but the two comments above mine should not have been posted here. That's just totally wrong.

Each of them, instead, should have been a post of its own, right on the front page.

Mitt Romney is a mealy-mouthed walking haircut, an empty suit whose political instincts to find the nearest camera and beam into it are as acute and uncontrollable as a dog in frantic search of a leg to hump. As governor of Massachusetts (and let's not forget that getting elected governor of Massachusetts as a Republican hasn't been any kind of feat since Bill Weld in 1992) he did, well, practically nothing. He lost most of the big showdowns, and tied the rest. Billy Bulger retired from the Senate to take a sinecure of equal if more subtle power as head of UMass. The turnpike commission smacked him around like a skinny third-grader. The state's finances failed to improve measurably by any standard. Although he didn't actively *hurt* the state, Romney showed absolutely no spark, no genius for leadership, nothing indeed except for a genius for pandering to whatever audience was in front of him at the time. I don't give a rat's ass that he's a Mormon.
What matters is that he thinks failing to outmaneuver the Massachusetts Turnpike Commission qualifies him to enter into deep negotiation with Iran (not to mention Senate Democrats).

P.S. What Phil said about the flip-flops is absolutely true. Next time you see Mitt in front of a camera, look for two things: a statement that exactly contradicts something he said in the past, with no apology or acknowledgement, and that slightly spastic bending-over thing that men in suits do when they need to surreptitiously move a raging erection from one side of the zipper to the other.

I haven’t heard anything (though I have only begun to look at the candidates) that indicates that Romney is changing his views of a sudden.

Really? I mean, you aren't just being disingenuous here? I mean, starting with "I support the Brady Bill and gun control*" changing to "I am now a lifetime member of the ERA," Googling Mitt Romney flip-flop will get you an awful lot of results. Including a lot from the evangelicals that you seem to believe are so pragmatic.

His viewpoints, as I’ve seen them, do not fall outside the range of possible Democratic belief.

Um. Card is the one with the recent novel polemic in which liberals violently overthrow the government, right?

*Positions with which I happen to disagree, but I'm not running this year,

(ahem - "...mean more"...)

Damn, am I having typing issues today.

Hey Phil, in no particular order:

"Another point that Card raises, one that I’m not so sure of, is this" I did not mention in the post, though perhaps I should have, that fundamentalists have evolved into a thoroughly pragmatic bunch. They'll work with anyone who shares their agenda. If there were such a thing as morally conservative Satanists, the Dobson wing of the GOP would work with them.

I haven't heard anything (though I have only begun to look at the candidates) that indicates that Romney is changing his views of a sudden. I don't think your comment invalidates Card's point that a Republican who wins in Massachusetts is someone who appeals to moderates. They have to.

I see six assertions of fact in that first sentence. I know from personal experience that at least four of them are true. I found the essay at the Ornery American. I found it to be interesting. Orson Scott Card is the name of the person on the site, and I have personally read several of his books, so I know he's an author.

I can't imagine that he'd lie about being Mormon. And if the guy claims to be a Democrat, are you calling him a liar? His viewpoints, as I've seen them, do not fall outside the range of possible Democratic belief.

Unless you're quibbling about how I used the words "site" or "over" I think you're wrong about that one.

B: Don't forget "up".