Krauthammer on Huckabee-Romney

[Jeff Lebowski]

Interesting take on Huckabee playing the religion card:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Interesting take on Huckabee playing the religion card:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1

I have only three problems with this article. First, the opening paragraph is factually bullshit. In 1967, in the lead up to the 1968 democratic convention and as the ink was hardly dried on the Civil Rights Act, and the ashes of U.S. cities burned in race riots were still smoldering, Romney's Mormonism was a huge issue. I was only nine years old but remember the problem well. It was about that time that Stanford canceled all scheduled games with BYU and said it wouldn't play BYU again, and half the Wyoming football team boycotted playing BYU, causing Coach Lloyd Eaton to dismiss half his team, effectively ending the Wyoming WAC football dynasty.

If Krauthamer did his research he would know that Mo Udall was given a hard time by black leaders for being Mormon and publically repudiation any ties to the Mormon Church. I remember that well too.

Second, Romney has made religion an issue from the beginning. For example, flip-flopping on abortion so he could attract the evangelical vote (while Giuliani and McCain didn't flip flop). Romney made the race even more about religion with his ill-advised speech. In a backhanded way Krauthammer demonstrates that Romney highlighted a political problem for himself that would have been best addressed by ignoring it. He should have shown religious affiliation is irrelevent by shutting up about the whole issue including the nature of his own faith. Give Evangelicals an inkling that this is about voting with your faith or not and you know how they'll vote.

Third, this wasn't a Kennedy religion speech. It was Romney telling Evangelicals "my religion is the same as yours, Christ is my personal savior. I'm a religious kook like you." Kennedy said I'm not a religious kook.

Krauthamer is shameless.

[SeattleUte]

Should we ever believe anything written by Krauthamer henceforth? It took me all of two minutes to find this. So now we know either Krauthamer doesn't care whether his factual assertions are true if they suit his purposes, or he's so lazy he won't even spend two minutes of to check out Wikipedia. What a worthless shmuck.

"During the Michigan primary, the Carter campaign had Coleman Young, the mayor of Detroit, accuse Udall of racism for belonging to the Mormon church, which at the time, did not allow blacks to serve in the church's priesthood (since changed in 1978 by revelation to the Mormon prophet, Spencer W. Kimball). Young's attack was at least somewhat unfair, since Udall had been a longtime critic of that church policy, and had ceased being an active member because of it. Carter's subsequent sweeping of the black vote in the Michigan primary was key to his crucial and narrow victory in Michigan."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Udall

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I have only three problems with this article. First, the opening paragraph is factually bullshit. In 1967, in the lead up to the 1968 democratic convention and as the ink was hardly dried on the Civil Rights Act, and the ashes of U.S. cities burned in race riots were still smoldering, Romney's Mormonism was a huge issue. I was only nine years old but remember the problem well. It was about that time that Stanford canceled all scheduled games with BYU and said it wouldn't play BYU again, and half the Wyoming football team boycotted playing BYU, causing Coach Lloyd Eaton to dismiss half his team, effectively ending the Wyoming WAC football dynasty.

If Krauthamer did his research he would know that Mo Udall was given a hard time by black leaders for being Mormon and publically repudiation any ties to the Mormon Church. I remember that well too.

Second, Romney has made religion an issue from the beginning. For example, flip-flopping on abortion so he could attract the evangelical vote (while Giuliani and McCain didn't flip flop). Romney made the race even more about religion with his ill-advised speech. In a backhanded way Krauthammer demonstrates that Romney highlighted a political problem for himself that would have been best addressed by ignoring it. He should have shown religious affiliation is irrelevent by shutting up about the whole issue including the nature of his own faith. Give Evangelicals an inkling that this is about voting with your faith or not and you know how they'll vote.

Third, this wasn't a Kennedy religion speech. It was Romney telling Evangelicals "my religion is the same as yours, Christ is my personal savior. I'm a religious kook like you." Kennedy said I'm not a religious kook.

Krauthamer is shameless.

Krauthammer was probably just going by the conventional wisdom. I have read numerous articles that state the same thing; i.e., that religion was less of an issue with Udall and Romney senior compared to today. Perhaps what they mean is that it is less of an issue with their own party since the evangelicals were much less powerful then.

It seemed to me that the main point of his article was to highlight how Huckabee has manipulated the religion angle to vault ahead of Romney.