Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Helping Mitt   [Rich Lowry]

Just read that Linker piece in The New Republic. How shabby. If this is the best they can come up with, liberals are truly going to disgrace themselves over the Mormon question and do Romney a favor by making him seem the subject of unfair, “below the belt” (David Gergen's words last night) attacks. Granted Mormonism is going to strike lots of people as bizarre, but I wonder what Linker's practical concern is. What is the president of the Mormon church going to command a President Romney to do? And if this is such a worry, is there any evidence of the president of the church having issued commands robotically followed by other major Mormon politicians, Orrin Hatch, Harry Reid, Mitt Romney in his iteration as Massachusetts governor? I guess Linker would say they all were effectively lapsed Mormons. The problem now is that Romney has possibly had a secret conversion to Mormon fundamentalism! What's the evidence for this? He changed his public position on abortion and gay marriage, and “embraces [his faith] as central to his political strategy.” The worst interpretation that you can put on the former is that, as a practical politician, Romney was positioning himself for a presidential run, and I think the latter is untrue—is Romney running on his Mormonism and I just haven't noticed? Anyway, the more hit pieces like this, and the earlier they come, the better off Romney will be in the long run.

01/03 02:46 PMShare