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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-07-17

Denver Post: Here Come The Mormons!! 

The Denver Post had a major, front-page article today on Mitt Romney. The headline is straightforward:

Romney Faces Skepticism

But the caption, which doesn't show up in the online version, is priceless:

Candidate Tries To Bolster Credentials With Some of the base who sees his religion as a cult.

Ah, yes. Let's just slip in the "c" word as early as possible, make it front-page above the fold, and then, for whatever reason, leave it out of the easier-to-find online version.

Priceless.

The article itself is actually fairly balanced. It includes some very nice bio stuff like this:

One of Romney's key strengths is navigating difficult situations. After graduating with an MBA and a law degree from Harvard, Romney made his fortune as a financial consultant first at Boston's Bain & Co., and then he led the charge at Bain Capital. There he solved problems for major companies.

His wealth has been estimated to be about $400 million.

After making his fortune, Romney famously stepped in and turned around the 2002 scandal-ridden, financially troubled Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Then he went on to win a term as a Republican governor in heavily Democratic Massachusetts. In the Massachusetts election, he battled criticism over his state residency, but not over his religion.

And there is quite a bit of good background on LDS, including extensive quoting of Romney himself.

Romney comes off sounding like a man well-qualified for the job; so why would his religion be an issue? Is it because the Leftists in the media see us on the right as so close-minded that it makes easy copy for them? Or is it because the Leftists are actually so close-minded that THEY want to take their shots at him.

Or is it because the Leftists recognize that he could be formidable in the general election, so they want to start tearing at him now.

But what I found troubling about this article, other than the obvious bigotry in the headline, is actually the LACK of evidence for a split between Romney and Evangelicals that would have justified this coverage. In the whole article, they quote James Dobson from an old interview, and then they quote the spokesperson for Focus on the Family.

That's it--basically, ONE Evangelical to question about this.

That's really all they could find? Why, I know a few media types who would be called Conservative/Evangelical Christians (Ben and Jim jump to mind) who could surely provide both intelligent and balanced commentary on the issue. For that matter, I wrote on the subject not very long ago--I would have been happy to comment.

But for some reason the Post builds an entire schism within the GOP base on the commentary of one group.

I'm sure--in fact, I know--there are some Evangelicals who will not vote for a Mormon; just as there are some African-Americans who will never vote for a white man, or Muslims who would never vote for a woman. But each of these groups are but small subsets of the greater group that they represent.

It is irresponsible journalism for the Post to build a whole story on such flimsy evidence: it really wouldn't have been that hard to get more commentary.
Posted by: Michael / 7/17/2007 12:08:00 AM

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