More Media Mormonism, the shock continues

My post on Mor­monism two days ago drew the fol­low­ing com­ment from reg­u­lar reader Foible:

You’re once again mis­tak­ing the left for some sort of a hive mind. Some of us lib­er­als are against any politi­cians bas­ing laws on their faith. When Rom­ney uses his reli­gion as his excuse for chang­ing his polit­i­cal posi­tions then his reli­gion is up for discussion.

Mor­mons believe that Jesus and Satan are broth­ers, don’t you think that is infor­ma­tion the evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian vot­ers should have? I know that if he is the repub­li­can nom­i­nee I’m going to politely use his title when­ever I men­tion him; High Priest of the Order of Melchizedek, Mitt Romney

and as Stacy McCain notes this from Lawrence O’Donnell yes­ter­day:

Mor­monism was cre­ated by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught hav­ing sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-​eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was com­pletely sanc­ti­fied in the reli­gion he invented to go with it.

If O’Donnell thought there were votes in it, he would be accus­ing Mary of a tryst 2000 years ago.

and the with Politico:

“Let’s be hon­est, this is the core of who Mitt Rom­ney is,” he said. “He was a mis­sion­ary in France for two years. He has been a bishop in the church, which, in the Mor­mon church, is effec­tively like a a priest. Phil­an­throp­i­cally, he’s made huge con­tri­bu­tions. He’s had a big impact on the church. And yet he doesn’t talk about it. It’s the core of who he is, and yet he doesn’t feel like it’s safe to talk about.”

Let’s start with the given that Mor­monism is the­o­log­i­cal non­sense in many ways. Let’s also take it as a given that it has no bear­ing on his qual­i­fi­ca­tions be pres­i­dent, none of this mat­ters, the Democ­rats know­ing this president’s record need a dif­fer­ent sub­ject. Mitt can say things like this every day:

“…and while I under­stand the pres­i­dent doesn’t want to run on his record, he can’t run from his record…

…We know what Barack Obama’s vision for Amer­ica is, we’ve lived it these last three years.”

and twice on Sun­day. It won’t mat­ter, Moe Lane and Kevin Williamson not with­stand­ing Stacy knows what is coming:

And my friends, this has just barely begun. That lit­tle shot from O’Donnell? It was like the sig­nal gun to start a mas­sive barrage.

Maybe you have never done any research into the his­tory of Mor­monism. Maybe you have no idea how much mate­r­ial there is to work with. Maybe you are unaware of how many ex-​Mormons and other crit­ics of Mor­monism have already got­ten in touch with national news pro­duc­ers and reporters, eager to help them with “research” for all those in-​depth fea­ture arti­cles and multi-​part series about the LDS church.

If you don’t know any of that stuff, you can be for­given for think­ing that any neg­a­tive media focus on Mitt Romney’s reli­gion would auto­mat­i­cally be seen as unfair and big­oted by inde­pen­dent vot­ers. But just wait and see: If Rom­ney actu­ally does win the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, and if it ever appears that Mitt poses a seri­ous threat to Obama’s re-​election, then the gloves will come off and you will be dis­abused of your naïveté.

Mean­while to my friend Foible will almost cer­tainly be vot­ing for this guy:

Obama says he’s among those who some­times ques­tion God’s plan for him. But he says that’s pre­cisely when he recalls the “tri­umph” of the Easter story, and Jesus over­com­ing his doubts and fears before the crucifixion.

I sus­pect many on the sec­u­lar left won’t have a prob­lem vot­ing for this “Chris­tian­ist” because like sup­port­ers of Gay Mar­riage, they assume he is lying through their teeth.

To my friends in the GOP who insisted we needed Rom­ney: You have made your bed, I hope you find it comfortable.

Update: Stacy sees the method of this mad­ness for the media:

By using evan­gel­i­cals as the “hook” to talk about Mitt’s Mor­monism, the media clev­erly raise an issue that hurts Rom­ney more among sec­u­lar lib­er­als than it does among reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives. (Dude, if you think Santorum’s Catholi­cism offends fem­i­nists, wait until the media start doing their Seri­ous Jour­nal­ism cov­er­age of what Mor­mon doc­trine teaches about women.) There are all kinds of angles from which to fit the “Mor­mon Mitt” meme into the media nar­ra­tive, and yet some Repub­li­cans are so stu­pid they can’t imag­ine how the lib­eral MSM will man­age to turn this stuff into legit­i­mate news.

The pos­si­ble story angles are numer­ous, the basic mate­ri­als are plen­ti­ful, and how far the media might go with this meme is purely a func­tion of whether they view Rom­ney as a seri­ous threat to Obama in November.

Earth to Stacy, You’d be a seri­ous threat to Obama given his record, let alone a com­pe­tent busi­ness­man in a bad econ­omy like Rom­ney so of course the MSM will be play­ing this card and it is going to trickle down to con­gres­sional races. In fact I guar­an­tee the left’s War on Women meme will be used against Rom­ney based on his church in a way the left wouldn’t dare go after a Mus­lim, and con­gres­sional can­di­dates down the ticket will be made to answer ques­tions con­cern­ing it too.

I still don’t think it will be enough to keep Obama in the White House but it will not only be damn close it will be some of the ugli­est stuff you’ve ever seen.