Romney is down with Civil Rights
One of Romney’s biggest problems, as least as I see it, is the Mormon church’s civil rights policy. Blacks were unclean. So, Tim Russert asked Mitt Romney about his church’s record on Blacks and race relations.
Russert asks: Here was the headlines in the papers in June of ‘78. “Mormon Church Dissolves Black Bias. Citing new revelation from God, the president of the Mormon Church decreed for the first time black males could fully participate in church rites.” You were 31 years old, and your church was excluding blacks from full participation. Didn’t you think, “What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?”
Romney: [snip] I can remember when, when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from, I think, it was law school, but I was driving home, going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio, and I pulled over and, and literally wept. Even at this day it’s emotional, and so it’s very deep and fundamental in my, in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God. My faith has always told me that. My faith has also always told me that, in the eyes of God, every individual was, was merited the, the fullest degree of happiness in the hereafter, and I, and I had no question in my mind that African-Americans and, and blacks generally, would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons.
I was at the malt shop with Archie and Reggie and Sally Sue came in and told us that Blacks were okay. I was so happy. Golly gee. Really. That’s how it happened. That is so clean. So, mom and pop and apple pie. It may be true but I doubt it. If Romney has his family were so pro-civil rights, what he do in his church to push for change? Earlier he spent some time taking about how his father was a big supporter of civil rights. Really? What did he do in his church to make them see the error of their ways?
I think that Mitt Romney like most politicians is an opportunist. He has flip-flopped on abortion a couple of times. I just can’t square his abortion positions with a man of true convictions. I don’t know.
Romney has no convictions. Also, if you read the CBS news account last month of his early years as a student at BYU and the years afterward, it’s really clear that he wasn’t crying tears of joy when blacks were allowed to join his church. I think he is a racist or at least has been one in the past. But more than that, he is almost like a man with no soul - someone who would say anything to get elected. He is .. a male version of Hillary.
TBV -
Thanks for your thoughts. He really isn’t a male version of Hillary. He has nicer hair!!!
Thanks again.
Could be major or minor inconsistency, depending on how you view the candidate….
Mitt says, “I can remember when I heard about the change I was driving home from, I think it was law school, but I was driving home, going through the fresh pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusettes. I heard it on the radio and I pulled over and literally wept [pause, tears] even to this day it’s emotional.”
The Mormon church policy with regard to race changed in June 1978. According to Wikipedia, as well as Hugh Hewitt’s book, Mitt completed his JD/MBA at Harvard in 1975. So Mitt probably wasn’t driving home from law school. Of course he didn’t totally commit himself to that detail in this quote. However he did say he was driving through the Fresh Pond Rotary in Cambridge. I’m not familiar with Cambridge or Harvard, but I assume the Fresh Pond Rotary is in the vicinity of campus. By this time Romney was a 31 year-old VP and Bain & Co. and I’m pretty sure they were living in Belmont.
Not saying it’s the case here (yet), but seems that it’s always the little factual inconsistencies that make the little stories told by Bill, Hill, Al, and John Kerry for that matter seem not quite right … and of course the blogosphere jumps all over it. If it was, as he says it was, a moment of deep emotional impact, one that still brings him to tears almost 30 years later, I would guess that he’d have more of the details straight.
Kind of seems like Mitt will say anything to any audience … the hunting story, and now there’s questions about whether his dad really “marched with” Dr. MLK (in addition to the issue of whether Mitt “saw” it as he claimed in his speech …Romney wasn’t even in the country during much of that period; he was living in France serving a mormon mission).