Pope Mitt I

Mitt Romney's 'God Speech' still haunts. It was so offensive to unselfish students of logic, and, more important, such an affront to what remains of the American political tradition, I feel compelled to revisit the scurrilous thing after lo these many days. It's Mitt's fault that I can't instead be writing this morning about the CIA and its happy band of felonious lawyers.

I especially wanted to know how his speech played in that imposing bubble of our national democratic process -- Iowa -- so I took a look at what the influential Des Moines Register had to say. And what it had to say, as captured in its editorial headline, was that "It's Sad Romney Felt Need To Explain Faith." That spoke for many, I'm sure; for others, such as myself, the governor's speech was more infuriating -- and at times, simply mystifying -- than sad.

It was marvelously crafted and artfully delivered. I'll give him that much. But beyond stylistics, the speech labored principally on behalf of the already Constitutionally befuddled, the historically ignorant and the downright nitwitted.

The Register, in airing one cause of its sadness, said with some syntactical difficulty that "It reflect[ed] the heavy-handed role religion plays in American politics today that he thought it necessary to appease conservative evangelical Christians."

True enough. But at least the speech itself was largely a tactical appeasement, and to that there is a bright side. For around 30 years the GOP has pampered and catered to conservative evangelical Christians, and now, finally, one of its paragons has run into the wall of inevitable sectarian divide.

Mitt and his would-be followers are squabbling over religious doctrine, and there's nothing quite so divisive as different folks' absolute knowledge of the Almighty's Word. Not even tax cuts make virtuous Republicans this excitable. And it's sweet justice. Will a head-bowing Baptist accept a knee-bending, transubstantiating Catholic -- or an adherent of a multi-wifed mystic from the annals of psychiatric disorders? Who knows. And who cares. The GOP got itself into this mess, and it can crawl itself out of its own slime. He who cares least, I suspect, is God.

The Register got more to the important point in observing that "At a few points ... he overstepped the line that should separate church and state in his enthusiasm for the presence of religion in the public square."

Overstepped it, hell. He lunged at it, kicked it, and obliterated it. Much hoopla was made by the fawning commentariat in favorably comparing Mitt's efforts to John Kennedy's. What the adoring ones failed to point out, however, or even seemed to notice, was that Kennedy's 1960 oration served to profoundly endorse the solid separation of church and state. Romney's did the opposite. He portrayed himself as the chief pope and regulator of what he regards as proper American beliefs.

As the Register just as properly snarled, he "singled out those who 'seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgement of God' and mocked them for the 'religion of secularism.' Stooping to divide Americans into believers and non-believers illustrates the danger in government promoting religion in American life" -- which is precisely, of course, what Mitt proudly promised to do as your president.

Yet strangely enough and as an aside, I had no problem with Mitt's mocking of secularism -- the one "religion" he worked himself into an intolerant lather about with a High Republican Indignation normally reserved for the dastardly liberal. No problem at all, to be fair about it, since I too tend to mock when it comes to religion. In fact, long ago I solved the dicey problem of falling into nasty, discriminating religious bigotry by deciding to mock and distrust all organized religion.

Their almost laughable pomposity stems from their self-satisfied knowing, even though what they claim to know cannot possibly be knowable. A trained theologian or ordained minister has no more insightful keys to the infinitely metaphysical than does your local McDonald's fry cook. And that is just a fact of earthly and epistemological life.

But I digress, somewhat. So I'll conclude.

Perhaps Mitt's candidacy and his concomitant religious brouhaha will soon be moot, given that the Des Moines Register and others' polling shows him swiftly losing righteous ground to the even more godly Mr. Huckabee. Then we can move on to the latter's differing but equally peculiar justification of theocratic politics.

Or maybe Mitt and Mike can get together and stage a Republican Council of Nicaea, and then resolve -- once and for all, just like the original Council did -- these unanswerable questions that have absolutely no business in the democratic process.

Comments

[Clemsy]

How anyone can 'rationalize' religious (Christian) fundamentalism as part and parcel with liberal, secualr democracy is well beyond me.

Joseph Campbell, as well as Jefferson, Madison, et al, must be spinning wildly in their graves.

Of course this is all England's fault. They kicked the Calvanists over here with a "Good riddance!" and we haven't been able to uproot it.

Ironic that the most religious of the founders was from Massachussetts. The most liberal, when it came to religion, were southerners.

[Iron Man]

Can anyone tell me who in their right mind would vote for a Republican (excluding Ron Paul, or course)in the next presidential election? While it's scary to think that 59 million Americans voted for the maniac in charge in the last election, could anything near that number be fooled again?

Then again, after having rigged two elections, do the head wonks at the GOP really even care?

[Mooser]

In order to advance in the Mormon "church", Romney has sworn oaths which are incompatible with an oath to the Constitution.
In addition. Romney, as a Mormon, has "secrets", which he is sworn to conceal from outsiders.
This also disqualifies him from the Presidency, to me.
He has not said one thing which could convince me he would not obey, or at the least favor, the Mormon church over the rest of Americans. It is, after all, the "one true church".

The LDS church is founded on fraud and runs on deceit.