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Agents of intolerance to Romney: Go away |
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The New Testament teaches: “All who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Perhaps an updated bible of political strategy should include this revision: “All who live by intolerance will die by intolerance.” Because that’s what we saw last night in Iowa. Longtime frontrunner Mitt Romney went down hard to a small-state governor who was barely a blip in the polls a few months ago and who spent maybe a dime for every dollar spent by Romney. Why it happened is pretty clear in the polling: some 60 percent of the Republicans who came out Thursday night described themselves as evangelical Christians. And many – maybe even most – evangelical Christians view Romney’s Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints as an un-Christian cult. This wouldn’t have been so bad, had Romney not been the one major candidate who for the past two years had been basing much of his campaign’s success precisely on support from evangelical Christians. Romney’s people correctly assessed that Rudy Giuliani, who continues to support gay rights, and John McCain, who famously called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance” in 2000, would not be winning over evangelicals. Romney saw an opportunity to corner the niche market that could win him Iowa and South Carolina, and he took it. That he would choose to pander to a group that castigates his own religion speaks volumes. Surely through the years he has heard the snickers and seen the smirks of those who would ridicule him because of his faith. Despite that, he made those who believe most strongly that his church is a fraud a cornerstone of his campaign? True, he was clever in his approach. Let’s not worry about who is a prophet and who isn’t. It’s enough that we all believe in the one true God, unlike those (take your pick here) Muslims … secular-humanists … Democrats. Of course, to the fundamentalist Christians who flooded the Republican caucus sites last night, it wasn’t enough. Romney is a Mormon, and Mormons aren’t really Christians, and that was the end of it. This should not have been so hard to foresee. To the contrary, with his money and his organizational skills, Romney had the opportunity to forge a radically new strategy that forewent those early states that are so dominated by evangelicals and instead focused on larger, later states whose electorates would not have cared about his religion – the Rudy Giuliani strategy, in other words. He could have done this, but he didn’t – and that speaks to Romney’s bigger weakness, which is that all the Power Points and jargony management talk notwithstanding, Romney doesn’t really think outside the box, or at least has not in this campaign. Rather, he happily chose the same old box the Republican Party has used for 30 years – the one where you embrace the “social” conservatives and wink and nod and break bread with the “racial” conservatives. True, part of the opposition to him is the phoniness of loudly supporting positions that exactly match what polls say Republican primary voters want, even positions diametrically opposite of those he held just a few years ago. That problem, though, could be papered over with enough TV ads. The Mormon problem, apparently, could not – which is why it was clear the day that his campaign announced he would give “The Mormon Speech” that he was finished, at least among the Republican “base” that he so coveted. His campaign correctly worried that making such a big deal about the religion would only encourage people who believed it was simply another offshoot of the Protestant Reformation to Google it and learn about Joseph Smith and golden tablets and traveling mummy exhibits. The speech itself was more than a little sad. Almost in the same breath, he indignantly demanded tolerance for himself, and then tried yet again to focus righteous scorn on those who would prefer to keep his God out of the public square. Needless to say, it did not work. When you lie down with intolerant dogs … well, you wake up getting crushed in Iowa. |
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January
4, 2008