Talk Elections

In light of all the ''obama is a muslim fascist kenyan terrorist anti-christ'' stuff that went on last year, are Democrats pumped to get even by getting real ugly hating on Mormonism?

Only the bigots.  Just like the "obama is a muslim" guys.

Who is the Senate Majority Leader?

Yeah, I think Harry Reid is going to make it perfectly clear that overt Mormon-bashing will not happen in this election.

Besides, why alienate a group when you can at least improve your image with it by specifically not bashing their religion?

I'd really prefer this not become an issue. The last Gallup poll I looked at on the matter seemed to suggest Democrats may be slightly more likely than Republicans or indies to discriminate against a Mormon candidate for President of the United States. It would be in dreadful taste for folks on the left to attack Romney for his faith and I do hope it will not at all be an issue in the general election.

There is likely a bias associated with disdain for Mitt Romney the man rather than the Mormon faith. Romney is this year's Republican candidate and the first Mormon major party nominee. The association is too strong to poll this cycle. I would have to compare it with similar past and future polls.

Romney actually is a Mormon.  a key distinction.

Sure, but they would still be bigots if they hated on him for being one.  It's not like they don't have valid, non-bigoted reasons to hate on him.  Just like there valid, non-bigoted reasons to hate on Obama.

Why in the world would they ? There are already so many legitimate occasions to bash Romney, so no need to go on hatemongering.

The whole ''Mormons aren't real Christians'' things seems like a legitimate concern, at least for ''real Christians''.

I mean, I think all religions are insane. But y'know, most people don't.

If you take Jesus seriously, and think Romney's belief in whatever Mormons think means he's not a real Christian, well, that could be a legitimate concern.

It also neatly parallels the ''Obama isn't a real Christian'' calls the right entertained last cycle. Except, y'know, they're not based on made up BS, but rather his stated religion.

This sounds like something a Republican would do.

Indeed, it is a long-standing Democratic tradition to get sh**t on by Republicans and then not respond in kind.

This is called "having standards", I guess.

Fair enough - sure. That sounds pretty reasonable. *nods*

The sorts of voters likely to get upset with Mormons as faux-Christians are not going to be Democratic voters.  Democratic voters upset with Mormons are upset because of the opposition of the Mormon church to a number of Democratic stances on social issues.  Even worse, unlike Catholics, most Mormons agree with their church on these issues.

Not really. I agree with Ernest that the kind of people who'd be especially bothered are mostly Republicans who'll vote for him anyway.

Plus, being seen as attacking someone's religion is politically toxic - personally, I think Romney's faith is a perfectly valid reason to vote against him, but there's a ton of other, less controversial reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney.

There's also the fact that Obama is politically savvy, and isn't dumb enough to target a rival's religion when he himself had political troubles over religion.

It might be worth saying that he had no problem with being a member of an organization that was blatantly racist for the first 31 years of his life. Also he is a HP for helping them pass Prop. 8.