Romney: The Hooey Maker

Mitt Romney tied on his ballet slippers today to toe dance around his being a Mormon.

Romney performed his solo ballet before President George Bush I, who like his son George Bush II, has shown no taste whatsoever for dance or for the fine arts but does respect political fraud.

Romney aimed at his real audience, of course, Bible-banging, right-wing evangelicals, as they call themselves. They compose a wad of the Republican vote in this country and suspicion that Mormonism is a great departure from the literal reading of the King James Bible that they espouse. Which it is.

Romney naturally avoid slippering this truth. Instead, with some eloquent footwork, the footpadding of the con man, he bowed briefly to being a Mormon and instead tapped out a long sequence about how religion should not dictate what the president thinks, but equally, the president ought not kick God out of the White House.

The sum of it all: He high-stepped a message about how freedom can’t exist without religion and religion can’t exist without freedom:

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

Pure hooey. Freedom as we know it had to be wrested not just from kings and dictators, it had to be wrested from prelates and other clerics.

As for religion relying on freedom to exist, hee-hee-hee. Catholicism and Protestantism flourished for centuries under totalitarian regimes, and still do. Few German priests or ministers said boo bad about Adolph Hitler. Many heiled with fervor, from the pulpit. As for Islam, name an Islamic country where there is or has been religious freedom. There may be one. It just doesn’t come to mind.

Romney did not bow at all to Buddhism or Hinduism. No votes to leap for.

And he did not play out as he pranced that being a good Mormon he believes that his religion “perfects” the Christianity that Southern Baptists and other evangelicals and Catholics, etc., etc., hymn over. Would have been a political misstep.