[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Speaking as a religious Jew, the most disheartening turn of the Presidential campaign has been the brazen daily mockery by the Angry Left of Mitt Romney’s religion.
When the Catholic Democrat Jack Kennedy ran for President in 1960, critics who fearfully mentioned his religion were, properly, branded bigots. In 2012, when critics cynically make fun of the Republican Mr. Romney’s Mormon religion, they are called incisive and measured.
Performing the ugly task previously cheerfully carried out by nut-case fringe groups such as the Klan, the mainstream now-fearless left openly is urging the electorate not to vote for Mr. Romney because he is a devout Mormon. It is a little-known religion the virulently anti-religious left fears and, importantly, does not recognize as valid.
Without concern for logic, fairness, common sense or history, the left argues:
• Too little is known about his “exotic” religion.
• Too little is known about the effect of the Mormon religion on Mr. Romney’s inner life.
The Good (?) Ol’ Days?
Catholicism was the main religious political bogeyman in the last century. Hardly anyone alive remembers the vilification of Democrat Al Smith of New York for his Catholicism when he ran against Herbert Hoover in 1928. It was a factor, but emphatically not a major one, when he was defeated.
Anti-Catholicism returned to the grave until 1960 when Mr. Kennedy, a nominal Catholic, ran for the White House against Richard Nixon. As a stranger in church, Mr. Kennedy said, honestly, his religion would not influence his policies. Ridiculous as it was, he was forced to add that no, he would not consult the Pope on matters of morals or any other topic. He didn’t even know who the Pope was. Religion steadily receded as the campaign advanced. By Election Day, it was tied in unimportance with Mr. Kennedy’s dislike for Brazilian-brewed chili.
When another Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, also a shoestring Catholic, ran for the White House, his religion never was a point of contention. After all, he was an empathetic Democrat. Ergo, his religion was a non-factor.
Because the Republican party historically has not pushed back against critics, the demonizing of Mr. Romney’s wealth and religion continues at a blazing pace without contradiction nine months before Election Day.
One of the great Mormon hatchet jobs of the present campaign was laid down yesterday. As The New York Times’s lead Sunday columnist, Frank Bruni, a Catholic who formerly was the newspaper’s Vatican correspondent, unfurled an obscene screed against Mr. Romney. Even in the midst of a months’ long blizzard of Klan-style fear-mongering against the Mormon religion by the Angry Left, Mr. Bruni’s screaming brutality stands out. In the supposedly unenlightened days of 1960, no self-respecting newspaper would have published his hateful naked damnation of a major religion.
The Wrong Beliefs
There are more Mormons than Jews or Muslims in America. Mr. Bruni’s problem is that so darned many of them are Republicans.
Since the rest of the (liberal) country looks to the Times for leadership, Mr. Bruni’s Klan language is crucial. He belittles Mr. Romney for not talking frequently about his religion. I have an answer: The candidate is viciously tattooed every time he does by envious boobs like Mr. Bruni who are troubled by the purity with which Mr. Romney has earned shis wealth.
Flashing unbridled hubris, Mr. Bruni displayed a veteran liar’s silkiness in his essay complaining, incredibly, in a headline “There’s too much reticence about Romney’s Mormonism.”
He made five disgusting points typical of the undisciplined Angry Left:
• In a “painstakingly calibrated” 2008 speech “designed to rebut any lingering impression of the religion as an exotic, even loopy, sect, he said the word ‘Mormon’ all of once. Christ or Christianity came up repeatedly. Four years later, he still avoids the word, trumpeting his faithfulness without specifying the faith. What’s surprising is that no one around him – not reporters, not rivals – talks about it all that much, either.”
• Mr. Romney’s “aloofness, guardedness and sporadic defensiveness: Are these entwined with the experience of belonging to a minority tribe that has often been maligned and has operated in secret?”
• “A tactful desire to avoid any sensationalizing of Romney’s faith has created a tendency not to give it appropriate due.”
• “[T]here are valid reasons for the rest of us to home in on Romney’s religion, not in terms of its historical eccentricities but in terms of its cultural, psychological and emotional imprint on him.”
• “The news media’s caution about focusing on Romney’s religion mirrors his own reticence, which, as [former colleague] Frank Rich pointed out in New York magazine last week, may be a big reason he cannot connect with voters in a visceral, intimate way. He’s muffling his soul.”
Masterfully repeating his lies and distortions against Mr. Romney and the Mormon religion, Mr. Bruni wonders if the candidate’s refusal to make Mormon the centerpiece of each public appearance – because it is so strange ¬– “is the right calculation. I’m not sure. But I know it makes for a woefully incompletely portrait, denying voters something that they deserve – and that might well cut his way.”
This is laughable from one of the voluble supporters of Swish (I Have Many Secrets) Obama whose religious beliefs, personal and political convictions, school records and personal history remain unknown in the fourth year of his Presidency.