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Will Romney be the Next President?

work in progress

Well-Known Member
Absolutely not, and you would probably agree, if you paused to think about it. What do libertarians have in common with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians? And what does the Chamber of Commerce care about either group?
Well, first let's not forget that there is a lot of crossover among these groups. If you've ever heard the name 'Gary North,' he writes on libertarian (anarcho-capitalist) economic theory on Lew Rockwell.com, while at that same time he is one of the pivotal figures in creating the modern Christian Reconstructionist Movement -- extreme theocrats who want Christian theocratic government that would invoke Biblical Law (Theonomy) which would include public stonings for the crimes listed in the Old Testament. Why would someone like North be talking about eliminating government, while pushing repressive theocracy out of the other side of his mouth? One simple reason why extreme fundamentalists talk about reducing government, is that they see their churches stepping in and taking over education, vetting candidates for office, and replacing civil law with church law. Remember, Republican libertarians are mostly concerned about government interference in business. They don't have many qualms about interfering in social issues. Even Ron Paul has no problem interfering with a woman's right to have an abortion.

As for the Chamber of Commerce....some of these billionaires are also religious crackpots...take Foster Friese for example, who bankrolled Rick Santorum. But, most of them, if they do profess a religious adherence, are likely only nominally religious...since they worship money above all else. But, they are aware that there are few of them, and lots of us! So, the practical strategy for Republicans to divide and conquer middle and lower classes has been to use social issues to distract rank and file Republicans from the fact that their economic strategies are bad for everyone who is not already rich! Thomas Frank wrote "What's The Matter With Kansas" 10 years ago, using his home state as Exhibit A for how Republicans took control the State without doing anything to address the economic needs of the majority. So, these groups may have different core concerns; but they are aware of how useful the other members of this movement are.
I think that you are oversimplifying both the Democratic and Republican parties. Both parties represent coalitions of interests. At this point in time, right wing extremists are dominant in the Republican Party. Those who might be regarded as centrists or moderates have been pushed to the margins by the Koch-brothers' well-funded Tea Party movement. That's why Boehner can't really make good on the deals he tries to make with Obama. He keeps getting out ahead of his party, and they snap the choke chain.
A good example of how the only "interest" that counts now are corporate interests. What the majority of people in either party want doesn't count for much.

I think that explains why you take a more sanguine view of American politics. You have much less at stake over who wins the next election, and it matters less to you whether the 5-4 splits in the Supreme Court get locked into total conservative dominance on every issue. The SC can basically nullify just about everything that progressives try to do, and they can do a lot to unravel the progress that has been made in civil rights over the past 50 years.
I guarantee you! If I was still living in the U.S. I would have already decided which third party candidate to get behind. There's no way I would waste my time on Obama, any more than I would with Romney. It's not about being sanguine; it's a matter of pushing back in whatever way possible at the two party duopoly, that is almost identical on so many important issues, and are so money-driven that they can't advocate raising taxes on the rich, regulating banking and hidden, derivatives markets, allow a Medicare buy-in, ending the wars and cutting military spending, or many other issues where neither party is on side with the majority of Americans.

I'm not asking you to feel sorry for Obama. I am asking you to cure yourself of "false equivalence-itis". There are huge differences between Romney and Obama in terms of what direction they will take the country. Wall Street has quite obviously anointed Romney as the next president, but Obama is far from out of the game. Obama still has to beg for money, but he will be far less beholden to big business than Romney, if he wins. Romney has made clear where he intends to go: "Corporations are people, my friend!"
I think the fact that he will not even breathe mention of repealing the millionaire's tax or threaten Cayman Islands - registered corporations who have dodged billions in corporate taxes, or started applying leverage on the bankers...who are putting their money behind Romney, tells me that the story isn't just about campaign financing, but likely includes deals for future compensations. If it was just about the campaign dollars, there would be nothing stopping him from going populist and running against the greedy bankers like FDR did back in 1936.
There is something you need to understand about defense contractors. A huge number of domestic American jobs depend on defense contracts. No president can afford to simply cut the defense budget to the point where hundreds of thousands of workers are thrown out on the street overnight. Weaning the US workforce and US corporations away from manufacturing war equipment is not a simple problem that can be solved overnight. The tough question is how you keep people gainfully employed while moving away from a wartime economy. Opposition to defense cuts has a very powerful constituency in the US, and Obama knows that. I don't expect Obama to pull any rabbits out of the hat when it comes to cutting welfare and social benefits programs, but I do think that he is the best person we have to minimize those cuts. Frankly, I think that Hillary Clinton would have made a better president, but that wasn't in the cards. (I supported Obama against her, and I regret that in hindsight.) Obama is the only candidate that liberals and progressives can support, even if he is a blue dog Democrat. Backing any other candidate would essentially be handing full control of the government back to the Republicans.
The product all these jobs are dependent on is ultimately sold to the Government, the Feds could create many times more jobs with infrastructure projects that would not only provide lots of temporary construction jobs, they would leave bridges, roads and other public projects afterwards that could add value to communities for the next half-century. Or all that money could be spent on something that just gets sent off to Afghanistan to be blown up.

Since defense contractors are the biggest welfare bums around...depending on the public purse for all of their revenues, they have always been heavily involved in lobbying in Washington and campaign financing. And the reason why so many jobs depend on them, is that since they are in turn dependent on the Government, they are the only industries that didn't export all of their production to the Third World for dollar-a-day workers. Some contractors - like Lockheed-Martin, has some kind of manufacturing spread throughout the Lower 48. They know this is not an efficient economic model, but they have only one customer that they have to deal with, and cost becomes less of an issue if they can blackmail and/or arm-twist a congressman into voting for procuring his product.
I agree with this point. The environment is the single most important issue facing us, and I fear that it is already too late to save ourselves from devastating catastrophes. Nevertheless, Romney would be far, far worse than Obama on pollution control measures. Obama has failed miserably in this area, but he has not made the problem significantly worse. Romney will make it far worse. Republicans would essentially dismantle all pollution controls if they could, and Romney would be all too happy to help them do that.
At best, Obama only offered a weak cap-and-trade strategy for achieving carbon emission targets early on. It was a plan that received enthusiastic backing from Goldman-Sachs, which is why it became Administration policy. But, the Koch's and other oil and coal billionaires seem to have more clout than Wall Street billionaires. The plan itself would have provided negligible benefits, since this type of cap and trade allows carbon emitters to "offset' their emissions with dodgy tactics like planting trees and buying rainforest tracks of land.

All in all, Obama shows no sign of taking climate change or other serious environmental issues that the U.S. has to deal with (like the declining Oglala Aquifer) seriously. No doubt a big part of the problem is that these are issues that are viewed as long term, and that can be sidelined for the next four years for some future presidential candidate to have to worry about. The only party that checks all the boxes on environment issues is the Green Party. Too bad the two party duopoly system keeps them shut out and not even in a position where Democrats would have to respond or feel motivated to adopt some of their ideas.
 

work in progress

Well-Known Member
The God Makers, seriously? :facepalm:

Professional anti-mormons don't even touch that garbage anymore.
Just out of curiosity, does that cartoon describe Mormon theology accurately or not? You haven't really explained the problems with it. I've heard some of the stories before -- such as the original inhabitants of North America being the Nephites Lamenities, who were supposedly descendents of the Israelites who somehow traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and settled the New World, and had a great war that vanquished the Nephites, all without leaving any archaeological evidence of their settlements, nor genetic evidence in the mDNA or Y Chromosome haplogroups of even a trace of Caucasian, let alone Middle-Eastern Ancestry.

But, to me every ancient mythology cannot be relied upon as historical fact, so I don't really care all that much about its veracity. My concern is how people of various religions live their lives today.

In this thread specifically, my concern with Mitt Romney is that he (and the LDS Church) seem to be trying so hard to ingratiate themselves with the foulest extreme wings of the conservative right. A lot of people were surprised that the Mormon Church leaders took it upon themselves to fund an expensive campaign against gay marriage in California; but in light of how hard the Mormon Church (and the Catholic Church) want to be part of the religious right coalition - that's when it really starts to make sense.

And, whatever church leaders want or don't want, the crucial test is how far adherents in positions of power will go to keep them happy. Earlier, I touched on the fact that Mittens is almost the doppleganger of his father - George Romney. In this article by Rolling Stone's Rick Perlstein, a theory is advanced that Mitt is responding to the spectacular rise and fall of his father's presidential campaign in 1968, and has decided that his dad was too liberal and too combative with powerful interests in the Republican Party. This part is something I wasn't aware of before -- an interesting factoid that Mittens touches on in his speeches about how his father was right front and center in the Civil Rights cause. But Mitt doesn't tell the whole story! And so far, no mainstream reporter has confronted him with the fact that Georgy Romney had to stare down the leaders of his church when he joined a MLK-solidarity march in 1964 in Detroit:
His calling card was his shocking authenticity; his courage in sticking to his positions without fear or favor was extraordinary. In January of 1964, for example, the second-year governor received a letter (downloadable here) from a member of the top Mormon governing body reminding him of the "teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith" that "the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro." Drop your support for the 1964 civil rights bill, the elder warned, arguing that God might literally strike Romney dead for his apostasy: "I just don't think we can get around the Lord's position in relation to the Negro without punishment for our acts," the letter said. Romney only redoubled his commitment – leading a march the next year down the center of Detroit in solidarity with Martin Luther King's martyrs for voting rights' in Selma, Alabama. In 1966, the Republican Party staked its electoral fortunes on opposing open housing for blacks. Romney begged them, unsuccessfully, not to. "This fellow really means it," an amazed Southern Republican said when Romney toured Dixie pushing civil rights in his presidential campaign; after America's worst riot broke out in Detroit under his watch, the governor said that America could respond with a crackdown on law and order – "but our system would become little better than a police state."

Can anyone even imagine Mitt doing anything similar in such circumstances?
 
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Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
The whole attack on Romney's religions strikes me as pure bigotry. If Obama & Biden were atheists or agnostics,
I could buy the religion bashing. But they too are believers, & yet are not subject to this scriptural scrutiny.
Don't like Romney or his party? Then don't vote for him. But there's no need to throw red herrings at us.
 

Apex

Somewhere Around Nothing
Just out of curiosity, does that cartoon describe Mormon theology accurately or not? You haven't really explained the problems with it.
There are many problems with it. To the point that most critics of our Church even admit as such. And it would take way too long and be far too off topic to go into them here. But here is a quote from a non-Mormon source, The non-denomination National Council of Christians and Jews:
The film does not - in our opinion - fairly portray the Mormon Church, Mormon history, or Mormon belief. It makes extensive use of "half-truth," faulty generalizations, erroneous interpretations, and sensationalism. It is not reflective of the genuine spirit of the Mormon faith. We find particularly offensive the emphasis in the film that Mormonism is some sort of subversive plot - a danger to the community, a threat to the institution of marriage, and is destructive to the mental health of teenagers. All of our experience with our Mormon neighbors provides eloquent refutation of these charges. We are of the opinion that The Godmakers relies heavily on appeals to fear, prejudice and other less worthy human emotions. We believe that continued use of this film poses genuine danger to the climate of good will and harmony which currently exists between…neighbors of differing faiths. It appears to us to be a basically unfair and untruthful presentation of what Mormons really believe and practice. — The National Council of Christians and Jews
Link

In this thread specifically, my concern with Mitt Romney is that he (and the LDS Church) seem to be trying so hard to ingratiate themselves with the foulest extreme wings of the conservative right. A lot of people were surprised that the Mormon Church leaders took it upon themselves to fund an expensive campaign against gay marriage in California; but in light of how hard the Mormon Church (and the Catholic Church) want to be part of the religious right coalition - that's when it really starts to make sense.
Except for the Prop 8 fiasco, I have no clue where you are getting the idea that the Church is trying to "ingratiate themselves with the foulest extreme wings of the conservative right". And there has been a strong movement within the Church against the anti-gay stance, which is beginning to take hold.
Gay rights activists see Mormons softening attitudes toward their community – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs
http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...ancisco-gay-bishopric-member.html#post2581928
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/current-events/133733-mormons-gay-pride-parade.html#post2953100
 

uu_sage

Active Member
It depends. As a liberal in the Green Party, I think there is not much difference between Romney and Obama. Obama represents what Republicans were 30 years ago (center right) and Romney represents the Conservative fringe. Romney will win assuming the the American people have political amnesia about Romney's earlier remarks in the primary and assuming the anti-Obama tide reaches a fevered pitch. Romney I believe has shot himself in the foot and he is in a bind. Does Romney give his blind allegiance to the Tea Partiers- the Religious right and forsake his conscience? Or does he stay true to his conscience and could potential draw in those who are not hard core Republicans? Given that Romney has placated the fringe radicals in his party, I truly believe that Romney will suffer a humiliating defeat. Most people in his own party don't like him. Having corporate experience does not make you qualified for the nation's highest office. Government and corporations have two different sets of priorities: governments are supposed to advance the common good while corporations are out to make profits.
 

Skeptisch

Well-Known Member
Government and corporations have two different sets of priorities: governments are supposed to advance the common good while corporations are out to make profits.
But on January 21, 2010, didn’t the Supreme Court rule that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government?
 

uu_sage

Active Member
A Supreme Court case called Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) established corporate personhood and corporate citizenship. Citizens United reaffirmed the Santa Clara County case and made corporate personhood worse. So if we are to dismantle corporate personhood, both of these rulings need to be struck down.
But on January 21, 2010, didn’t the Supreme Court rule that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government?
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
A Supreme Court case called Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) established corporate personhood and corporate citizenship. Citizens United reaffirmed the Santa Clara County case and made corporate personhood worse.
I'd say it became better. I distrust governmental authority which takes away rights of
people to associate & act in concert, be they unions, corporations, lobbies, clubs, etc.
Why don't we all admit what's really behind opposition to corporate (partial) personhood,
ie, that legal opposition is a smokescreen for their dislike of businesses influencing politics.
 

Katzpur

Not your average Mormon
Just out of curiosity, does that cartoon describe Mormon theology accurately or not?
It's an extreme example of parody. It's full of gross exaggerations and creative interpretations by people whose sole aim is to misrepresent the LDS faith.

You haven't really explained the problems with it. I've heard some of the stories before -- such as the original inhabitants of North America being the Nephites Lamenities, who were supposedly descendents of the Israelites who somehow traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and settled the New World, and had a great war that vanquished the Nephites, all without leaving any archaeological evidence of their settlements, nor genetic evidence in the mDNA or Y Chromosome haplogroups of even a trace of Caucasian, let alone Middle-Eastern Ancestry.
Seriously, there are almost too many inaccuracies to deal with. As to the issue of DNA issue, I'll try to find one of my prior posts that comments on it. I don't want to have to type out a lengthy response a second time if I can avoid it.

In this thread specifically, my concern with Mitt Romney is that he (and the LDS Church) seem to be trying so hard to ingratiate themselves with the foulest extreme wings of the conservative right. A lot of people were surprised that the Mormon Church leaders took it upon themselves to fund an expensive campaign against gay marriage in California; but in light of how hard the Mormon Church (and the Catholic Church) want to be part of the religious right coalition - that's when it really starts to make sense.
I don't really think the LDS Church itself could care less about ingratiating itself with "the foulest extreme wings of the conservative right." The LDS postion on Prop 8 seriously had nothing to do with trying to gain friends among Evangelical Christians.

And, whatever church leaders want or don't want, the crucial test is how far adherents in positions of power will go to keep them happy. Earlier, I touched on the fact that Mittens is almost the doppleganger of his father - George Romney. In this article by Rolling Stone's Rick Perlstein, a theory is advanced that Mitt is responding to the spectacular rise and fall of his father's presidential campaign in 1968, and has decided that his dad was too liberal and too combative with powerful interests in the Republican Party. This part is something I wasn't aware of before -- an interesting factoid that Mittens touches on in his speeches about how his father was right front and center in the Civil Rights cause. But Mitt doesn't tell the whole story! And so far, no mainstream reporter has confronted him with the fact that Georgy Romney had to stare down the leaders of his church when he joined a MLK-solidarity march in 1964 in Detroit:
His calling card was his shocking authenticity; his courage in sticking to his positions without fear or favor was extraordinary. In January of 1964, for example, the second-year governor received a letter (downloadable here) from a member of the top Mormon governing body reminding him of the "teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith" that "the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro." Drop your support for the 1964 civil rights bill, the elder warned, arguing that God might literally strike Romney dead for his apostasy: "I just don't think we can get around the Lord's position in relation to the Negro without punishment for our acts," the letter said. Romney only redoubled his commitment – leading a march the next year down the center of Detroit in solidarity with Martin Luther King's martyrs for voting rights' in Selma, Alabama. In 1966, the Republican Party staked its electoral fortunes on opposing open housing for blacks. Romney begged them, unsuccessfully, not to. "This fellow really means it," an amazed Southern Republican said when Romney toured Dixie pushing civil rights in his presidential campaign; after America's worst riot broke out in Detroit under his watch, the governor said that America could respond with a crackdown on law and order – "but our system would become little better than a police state."


Can anyone even imagine Mitt doing anything similar in such circumstances?
It's hard to say. Mitt does seem to be a little less "authentic" than his dad. We all know he has the tendency to say what his particular audience would like to hear. I don't think his dad was so much that way (although, I've got to admit, he was ahead of my time).
 

work in progress

Well-Known Member
I'd say it became better. I distrust governmental authority which takes away rights of
people to associate & act in concert, be they unions, corporations, lobbies, clubs, etc.
Why don't we all admit what's really behind opposition to corporate (partial) personhood,
ie, that legal opposition is a smokescreen for their dislike of businesses influencing politics.
Pure jingoistic nonsense as usual. The government in a democratic society is the only means to redress the ill effects caused by the greed and carelessness of corporations. That's why corporate power frames their propaganda as a campaign for freedom from repressive government. They want no regulations on what they put into their products, the environmental damage that they do, or the way they treat their workers.

In a democratic society, each citizen has an equal vote....which becomes meaningless in America-post Citizen's United, where corporations are guaranteed free speech through freely distributing as much money in the political process to buy candidates and influence the electorate through media saturation of propaganda. American democracy today is one dollar/one vote, and not one person/one vote. And as wealth becomes more and more concentrated at the top, the political candidates are more concerned with the interests of their funders than they are with the majority of voters....and what kind of a democracy is that?
 

work in progress

Well-Known Member
There are many problems with it. To the point that most critics of our Church even admit as such. And it would take way too long and be far too off topic to go into them here. But here is a quote from a non-Mormon source, The non-denomination National Council of Christians and Jews:
Link
Thanks. I haven't read through the whole article yet. One point that did catch my attention when I watched the video was that the language used seemed to be selected to be offensive and sensational in their use of descriptive terms. That's usually a calling card of propaganda. Some of the stories sounded vaguely familiar, but the FAIR analysis finds some are half-truths and generalizations, which is a problem for a viewer who only has a limited, sketchy understanding of Mormon theology.
Except for the Prop 8 fiasco, I have no clue where you are getting the idea that the Church is trying to "ingratiate themselves with the foulest extreme wings of the conservative right". And there has been a strong movement within the Church against the anti-gay stance, which is beginning to take hold.
Gay rights activists see Mormons softening attitudes toward their community – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs
http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...ancisco-gay-bishopric-member.html#post2581928
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/current-events/133733-mormons-gay-pride-parade.html#post2953100
I'm glad to hear that there are Mormons who do not blindly follow their leaders on political issues. What I was getting at about Prop 8, was that the LDS Church has traditionally tried to avoid getting so wrapped up with one side of a political issue. I'm sure the leaders never considered something like approving gay marriage previously; it just seems to me that previously, they would not have wanted to become part of the news story about Prop 8. Some conservative commentators theorized that they are trying to win acceptance among conservative Evangelicals and Catholics with this sort of political advocacy.
 

work in progress

Well-Known Member
It's an extreme example of parody. It's full of gross exaggerations and creative interpretations by people whose sole aim is to misrepresent the LDS faith.

Seriously, there are almost too many inaccuracies to deal with. As to the issue of DNA issue, I'll try to find one of my prior posts that comments on it. I don't want to have to type out a lengthy response a second time if I can avoid it.
On another post I got some linked material to take a look at. From my pov, I don't expect any dogma or scriptural narratives to be historically accurate, and I assume that it's up to the adherents to determine their merits and value. The DNA issue could become a problem if Mormons respond by attacking the messenger -- the scientists who are conducting the genomic analysis of various tribal groups in the Americas-- in the manner that creationists have literally gone to war against modern science because of their rejection of evolutionary theory. I read a response by an LDS apologist - Jeff Lindsey, who doesn't take on DNA testing directly, but responds that the Book of Mormon is written about an area of the Americas whose boundaries are not well understood today. He seems to think that traces of Middle-Eastern ancestry will be found if researchers find and test the descendants of the Nephites and Lamenites. Sounds like a reach to me; but it's up to those who follow the Book of Mormon to decide how to interpret scripture.

I don't really think the LDS Church itself could care less about ingratiating itself with "the foulest extreme wings of the conservative right." The LDS postion on Prop 8 seriously had nothing to do with trying to gain friends among Evangelical Christians.
In another post I mentioned that this was a theory advanced by a few pundits at the time Prop 8 was rejected.
It's hard to say. Mitt does seem to be a little less "authentic" than his dad. We all know he has the tendency to say what his particular audience would like to hear. I don't think his dad was so much that way (although, I've got to admit, he was ahead of my time).
George Romney was about as authentic as any major politician could ever be. Besides his unexpected strong support for civil rights, another pivotal moment was turned into the greatest political gaffe of all time by the media, after a local Detroit interview in 1967 when the host asked him if he had changed his views on the Vietnam War, and if so why he was sounding like a critic of the War. Rather than play etch-a-sketch, George Romney responded:
"When I came back from Viet Nam [in November 1965], I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get." He then shifted to opposing the war: "I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression in Southeast Asia." Decrying the "tragic" conflict, he urged "a sound peace in South Vietnam at an early time." Thus Romney disavowed the war and reversed himself from his earlier stated belief that the war was "morally right and necessary".[160]
George W. Romney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Romney clearly intended the term:"brainwashing" as a metaphor for how the generals and State Dept. officials who escorted him and other congressmen around Vietnam, and only showed them the story that they wanted to present back home...not what was really going on over there. George Romney realized he had been had, and said so. The problem was that he said it at a time when the Vietnam War was still supported by the majority, and the movie - The Manchurian Candidate - about a U.S. soldier who becomes a POW of the Communists and is turned into a programmed assassin, was still fresh in everyone's minds. So, Romney could be portrayed as a crackpot along the lines of Ross Perot. And the lesson for Mitt and future generations of politicians has been to tell the people what they want to hear...not what you really think or what they need to know!
 

Katzpur

Not your average Mormon
George Romney was about as authentic as any major politician could ever be. Besides his unexpected strong support for civil rights, another pivotal moment was turned into the greatest political gaffe of all time by the media, after a local Detroit interview in 1967 when the host asked him if he had changed his views on the Vietnam War, and if so why he was sounding like a critic of the War.
This sounds a whole lot more like Jon Huntsman. I'm a Mormon and intend to vote for Obama. I would have voted for Huntsman in a minute, though. He strikes me as being quite a whole lot more like George Romney than Mitt does.
 
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