Friday, February 08, 2008

Religion and Romney

I thought this op-ed piece in the NY Times was good food for thought.

It showed again Tuesday, in exit polls in the bellwether state of Missouri. Among the small group of Republican voters who say they never go to church, Romney got his highest vote total – 39 percent. Among people who attend services more than once a week, he received his lowest, 21 percent.

Put another way, those dreaded secularists – whom Romney himself criticized in his off-tune and hugely miscalculated speech on religion in December – were far more likely to vote for him than were the most devout Christians.

...In his speech on Mormonism in December, he took a swipe at secular Americans, missing his chance to dislodge the real base of anti-Mormon prejudice. And in his remarks Thursday in which he announced the suspension of his campaign, he mentioned the Democrats and “opponents of American culture” in the same sentence.

He would have been better off had he begged for tolerance from an audience full of the people who did him in.


Not that I support Mitt Romney or even think he'd make a good president but I think it's wrong to not vote for someone simply because of their religion. But given his penchant for dumping on so called "secularists" he simply got what he deserved