Anti-Romney Red bloggers and pundits keep insisting that “liberals” and “the media” will stir up anti-Mormon bigotry to defeat Romney. In fact, the folks who have been playing the Mormon card have been affiliated with Romney’s wingnut rivals.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
sd says
The people Romney are running against are other Republicans, and thus all “cards” being played against him are primarily being played by other Republicans. Funny how those primaries work. If Romney wins the nomination he’ll run a against a Democrat, and we’ll see what “cards” the Democrats play (overtly and covertly).
Of course, there is actual polling data on the prevalence of anti-Mormon bigotry by political party…
http://www.gallup.com/poll/148100/hesitant-support-mormon-2012.aspx
Grant Goodman says
One wonders how much that polling result is tilted by voters’ knowledge that the only Mormon presidential candidates around are Republicans. Similarly, I expect that opinions about eliminating the Constitution’s requirement that the president be native-born would have been colored by the fact that the only obvious beneficiary of the change would have been Schwarzenegger (before he disqualified himself with the public on other grounds).
curious says
Isn’t it also possible that Romney’s Mormon affiliation presents a problem to gay marriage supporters unrelated to simple “anti-Mormon bigotry”? Romney put his money at the disposal of the Mormon church (i.e. tithing 10%) which turned around and financed a very vigorous attack on gay marriage and in support of Prop 8 in California. While that may not be the issue his Republican opposition is motivated about, it is something for progressives to at least think about.
Mark Kleiman says
But in fact the Obama campaign, and some of the unions, have been hammering Romney relentlessly, and haven’t made an issue of his religion. Neither have the “mainstream media.” The wingnut attribution of bigotry to Democrats is, I submit, pure projection.