It seems to me that Mitt Romney is a pretty decent sort of guy. Of all the Republican candidates, he’s the only one whom I could remotely imagine voting for in a general election. (Yes, I am an independent and have even voted for Republicans as I have admitted on this blog in the past.)
What turns me off about him is that he doesn’t seem to commit to anything. I’m also very angry about how, like most of the Republican candidates, he so easily throws the gays under the bus. But that’s politics, I guess.
Now contrast him to Newt Gingrich who is so slimy that if you tried to put a sticker on him that said “decent,” it would burst into flames. I won’t go on and on about him because pretty much everyone knows everything there is to know about this scumbag.
And because of that you would think that the “family values” and “morals” crowd would stay away from the guy like termites avoid an Orkin factory. You would be wrong. It seems that when pitting Romney against Gingrich, the real important factor is what fairy tale each subscribes to:
The new president of the [South Carolina] Baptist Convention, a part of the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest religious group in the state with nearly 1,900 churches and 900,000 adherents in 2000), says the choice is clear.
The Rev. Brad Atkins, tabbed in November to lead the group for the coming year, told Patch on Friday that while Gingrich’s infidelities may represent a major obstacle for some Christian voters, it isn’t an issue that necessarily excludes the former speaker from consideration. Rather, it’s an issue that calls for prayerful consideration of Gingrich’s numerous public confessions to his wrongdoings.
The issue presented by Romney’s faith may be more deeply rooted to South Carolinians.
“In South Carolina, Romney’s Mormonism will be more of a cause of concern than Gingrich’s infidelity,” said Atkins, the pastor at Powdersville First Baptist Church in the Upstate.
“Conservatives can process and pray their way through the issue of forgiveness toward a Christian that has had infidelity in their life, but will struggle to understand how anyone could be a Mormon and call themselves ‘Christian.'”
Rick Perry’s pastor has already called Mormonism a cult. Now this is technically true, but so are all of the other dogmatic religions. Christianity is the Cult of Jesus. Mormonism is the Cult of Whatever the Hell it is that they believe. Haredi Judaism is the Cult of the Rabbis.
But when Perry’s pastor said it, he meant that HIS religion was a cool, totally God-approved, 100% right way of life and that Romney’s was a horrific heresy. You just have to know how to translate these people accurately.
What can we learn from this?
According to fundamentalist Christians, as long as you subscribe to the correct fairy tale, you can be as big an ass as you want thanks to the out clause called “forgiveness” provided by Jesus. (And Newt’s Catholicism, whose popes were once vilified by Protestants as the antichrist, is part of the Christian family again. Someone please tell Martin Luther.)
The silliness of all this is overshadowed by the dangers of allowing our country to be led by seriously immoral men who rely upon magic tricks to clear their consciences and their records.
