Season for Politics

               Now that the presumptive presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Willard Mitt Romney, has been all but crowned, I thought I might weigh in on some of the more obvious issues that you will be hearing squawked about in the remaining five months or so before the election.

 An obvious fact evident to anyone willing to be unbiased is that the Mainstream Media (MSM) did not properly vet then presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama. It’s amazing that questions still linger out there concerning President Obama’s birth record/citizenship, passports used claiming citizenship other than U.S., school records sealed, close associations with people of dubious backgrounds, whether he’s a Christian or a Muslim, etc.

Vetting is a long-standing tradition maintained by the media. They scour a candidate’s background looking for any little thing that can be used to challenge the legitimacy of the person running for elected office. It has already begun with Romney.

Anyone desiring to run for office is fair game, as detestable a process as vetting may be. But I would be quick to add that a level of fairness should be administered for both sides in the contest. Do I expect to see this fairness employed in the Obama-Romney race? No. The MSM is severely flawed and in need of first being scrapped and then possibly resurrected much as the phoenix arose from its ashes. The MSM is clearly in the tank for the Obama administration.

So what do I imagine will be on the table for targeting Mitt Romney? First, that he is a fat-cat Wall Street type. Second, that he is a Mormon and as such may be controlled by the president of the Latter Day Saints (LDS, or Mormon) church. Third, Romney will be castigated as a war-monger. There’s much more, but for the sake of space and time, this will have to suffice.

Let’s consider the fat-cat Wall Street label. Romney comes from a hard-working family. His father, George W. Romney, made a lot of money on his own, eventually serving as the governor of Michigan from 1963-69, and then the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He was also the president of the American Motors Corporation during its formative years, 1954-62. It was his idea to develop the Rambler, a fuel-efficient car for its time. He referred to the cars made by the Big-3 Detroit automakers as “gas-guzzling dinosaurs.” George also ran for president of the United States in 1968. One of the accusations leveled against Mitt today is that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, implying he came from the privileged class. The same was true of Senator John F. Kennedy. But being born to privilege will only carry you so far, and then you must launch out on your own. Mitt did this and was by all estimations, highly successful. His business acumen caused the Olympic Games of 2002 (clearly a disaster in the making before Romney was asked to take over), to totally turn around, ending up with a surplus of $53 million which he designated for use in future Olympics.

Are Romney’s religious beliefs as a practicing Mormon an issue? For most folks I would say this is not a problem. I fully expect, however, that his political opponents will come after him for his conservative views, views that have a solid biblical base, such as the recent brouhaha over same sex marriage. In addition, as with our first Catholic president in John F. Kennedy, some of his opponents were using a fear-mongering tactic suggesting that the pope in Rome would be dictating policy to Kennedy if he were elected. I expect to hear someone postulate that the president of the Mormon Church will be secretly running the country should Romney become president. Will Evangelical Christians vote for Romney? Yes, in large numbers. Why? Because where Romney stands on the issues facing our nation is where Evangelicals stand. The stumbling block Evangelicals and most Christian churches have with Romney and his Mormon faith is centered on the person and the work of Jesus Christ. This is inviolable and is a barrier that will not be overcome. But that should not prevent Christians from voting for Mitt.

The last topic for attack against Romney will be the label that he is a war-monger. This is a pejorative term which will be used much the way Senator Barry Goldwater was vilified in his presidential bid in 1964. President Lyndon Johnson and his campaign painted Goldwater as a danger to world peace, claiming that Goldwater was willing to take a hard line on the halting the spread of communism in Southeast Asia which would get us into a war. The attack worked, and Johnson was elected. Ironically, Johnson immediately began calling for a troop buildup for deployment into South Vietnam. So who was the real war-monger? Mormons strongly support the defense of the United States. It is the Mormon belief that the United States is their promised land. It is no surprise then that there is a significant presence of Mormons serving in our military. You can be sure that Mitt Romney will be strong in national defense and the building up of our military, just as President Ronald Reagan did following the disaster of the Carter administration.

We’ll address this further next week.