Mitt Romney Creates His Own Religious Test
In his overdue and over-hyped address today on "Faith in America," GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney sought to disarm evangelicals' fears about the role of his Mormon faith, fears that threaten his campaign's prospects in the lynchpin state of Iowa. But while he likely failed in that task, Romney assuredly succeeded in redefining the U.S. Constitution's ban on religious tests for political office. According to Romney's notion of public service, Muslims and atheists need not apply.
In a speech that featured only one mention of the word "Mormon," Romney sought to walk a tightrope, proclaiming his own religion's just place in the American pantheon of faith without in any way describing it. Ironically, Romney took pains to sing the praises of the rites (and stereotypes) of other faiths while excluding his own:
"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims."
But when it came to his core message, Romney stressed the Constitution was on his side:
"There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith."
Too bad Mitt Romney advocates a religious test of his own.
To be sure, atheists and agnostics have no place in leading Mitt Romney's America. That meaning was unambiguous in Romney's 2006 declaration to Fox News that "People in this country want a person of faith to lead them as their president." The former Massachusetts Governor made the point even more broadly today, proclaiming simply "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." (As Atrios notes, how fitting that Romney was introduced today by President George H.W. Bush, who famously stated, "No, I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.")
But it is not merely the unbelievers who would be disempowered and disenfranchised by Romney even as his Mormon brethren would welcomed among America's chosen faiths. The roughly five to seven million Muslims in America, too, are second class citizens in Romney USA.
As Mansoor Ijaz wrote in the Christian Science Monitor:
I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."
(Despite Romney's protestations that he was misquoted, Ijaz stands by his account. Others reports of Romney's anti-Muslim bias have also surfaced since.)
As I've written previously, Romney's task today was much different than that of John F. Kennedy in 1960. With his insistence that the President be a "man of faith" and his promised exclusion of Muslims Americans from his cabinet, Mitt Romney brought this faith-based trap on himself. Kennedy sought to defuse the religion issue to help win a national election; Romney has embraced faith-based politics to court the conservative evangelical voters who make up a third of Iowa caucus-goers.
But with his rhetoric today, Mitt Romney made it clear he is not following in JFK's footsteps:
"For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been -- and may someday be again -- a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril."
With his words, Mitt Romney made it clear that once he as a Mormon steps through the door to the White House, he's is perfectly content to close it to others behind him.
UPDATE 1: Over at the conservative National Review, Mona Charen labels Romney's the "best political speech of the year." She was especially fond of Romney's Europe-bashing ("empty cathedrals"). But in a certain sign of the apocalypse, I find myself in agreement with Party of Death author Ramesh Ponnuru, who asked, "what about atheists and agnostics?"
UPDATE 2: Concerns are rising even from reliably conservative corners over Romney's jihad against American atheists and agnostics. In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan asks:
"Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote."
And in the New York Times, David Brooks in "Faith vs. the Faithless" notes that "there was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious." Brooks worries that;
"Romney's job yesterday was to unite social conservatives behind him. If he succeeded, he did it in two ways. He asked people to rally around the best traditions of America's civic religion. He also asked people to submerge their religious convictions for the sake of solidarity in a culture war without end."
Meanwhile, TPM Election Central reports that the Romney camp is keeping mum about its apparent war on atheists:
"A spokesman for the Mitt Romney campaign is thus far refusing to say whether Romney sees any positive role in America for atheists and other non-believers."
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