O'Donnell on Romney's Impending Primary Failures
Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC has been saying for a long time that Tim Pawlenty is the most likely Republican presidential nominee for 2012, simply because he lacks the fatal faults of the others. I agree.
I've argued that Mitt Romney has a problem which most media will not talk about: the Christianists and Evangelicals who run the Republican primaries will never, ever, vote for a Mormon. And here, at last, O'Donnell says it to an outlet which prints it (though Playboy is scarcely "mainstream media"):
I've argued that Mitt Romney has a problem which most media will not talk about: the Christianists and Evangelicals who run the Republican primaries will never, ever, vote for a Mormon. And here, at last, O'Donnell says it to an outlet which prints it (though Playboy is scarcely "mainstream media"):
- PLAYBOY: What’s your take on Mitt Romney?
O’DONNELL: Romney is going to have a problem with Christian fundamentalists who believe Mormonism is not an actual Christian branch but a heretical branch. They will not vote for a Mormon under any circumstances. I could vote for someone who married five times, and I could vote for a Mormon for anything. Tell me what your tax policy is. Tell me what you want to do with Medicare and Social Security. But Republicans, at least evangelical Christian Republicans, would have a serious problem voting for a Mormon, and they won’t. It’s why Romney gave a speech in which he tried to explain his religion. He talked about the faith of his fathers, but he didn’t say anything about the faith of his fathers. He didn’t say a single thing his fathers believed, not one. And the one Mormon he cited, Brigham Young, he cited heroically.
PLAYBOY: What do you have against Brigham Young?
O’DONNELL: Brigham Young said God told him that if a white person has sex with a black person, the white person will die on the spot, in the bed, won’t take another breath. The media don’t know that, and they think that because a university is named after Brigham Young and its basketball team has black players there’s nothing else to think or know about it. But if the candidate brought up the faith of his fathers, then you can reasonably ask the candidate questions about the faith of his fathers, including the fact that well into Romney’s adulthood his religion said that black men could not be priests in this church. Then, one day, the president of the Mormon church said, “God just told me he has changed his mind, and black men can now be priests.” The day before God changed his mind, what did Mitt Romney think about black men not being allowed to be priests in the Mormon church?
PLAYBOY: Who would have a harder time running for president in America, a Mormon or an atheist?
O’DONNELL: An atheist would have a bigger problem in America overall but a smaller problem with evangelical Christian voters, because to them an atheist is not a heretic. An atheist is not putting a false god in front of God.* * * * Besides his religion, Romney has the problem of having created Obamacare in Massachusetts before Obamacare went national.