talkpolitics | The Game Changer?

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mitt romney

The Game Changer?

Well, it looks like Mitt Romney has been playing the "Selective Family Album" game and kinda/sorta/oppsies forgot to tell everyone he is 1/4 Mexican.

And just did why did Mitt's father flee Mexico for the safety of the US?

In his public life Mitt Romney has said and written little about his ancestors' history in Mexico. In one oft-repeated quote he said his family left the U.S. for Mexico to escape persecution for their religious beliefs.

In fact, Romney's great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, led that first expedition to escape not persecution but prosecution for polygamy, or what Mormons called ‘plural marriage.’

Well, this is rather awkward, from a race standpoint. So we have the Southern US. There is a strong showing of rather simple minded voters who are Crusading Voters for Christ and All Other Things White™.

Who they going to vote for. Mitt the Mex? Barrak the Magic Negro?

Or maybe that white guy Gary Johnson, the only real social liberal/fiscal conservative in the race.

God DAMN I love Southern Idiocracy.

Question: Game changer? If Mitt embraces his SOTB roots, will this swing brown skins to his camp? WILL ANYONE DEMAND TO SEE HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

ETA: This just in! Cain demands to know more about this polygamy thing!

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Man, that entire article pisses me off. First, this came up in 2008 (http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=frwiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1rUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1457,6030085&dq=romney+mexico&hl=en) when examining his Mormon roots (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,254362,00.html). This treats it as some sort of news, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that NBC is demagoguing the issue, the really offensive part is here:

In his public life Mitt Romney has said and written little about his ancestors' history in Mexico. In one oft-repeated quote he said his family left the U.S. for Mexico to escape persecution for their religious beliefs.

In fact, Romney's great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, led that first expedition to escape not persecution but prosecution for polygamy, or what Mormons called ‘plural marriage.'

While those who treat gay marriage as a top issue shouldn't be silent about this, the editorializing here that somehow the Mormons should have been ashamed about their points of view on plural marriage/polygamy and the implication that they somehow earned the "persecution" because it was actually "prosecution"...ugh.

The reality is that the American treatment of Mormons is among the worst treatment of religion this nation has seen. It's doubly shameful considering our founding, and to treat Romney's family fleeing as some sort of cowardly act of sin is really appalling to me. I mean, for god's sake, a governor actually filed an extermination order (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44) to try and drive the Mormons out of Missouri, if not worse.

I'm no fan of Romney, but the fact that this sort of religious bigotry is tolerable really frustrates me. Gotta be afraid them scary Mormons will marry TWO of yer daughters, right? Those who this tripe is directed to will appreciate the fact that his family was escaping religious persecution, not be horrified by the fact that he's "a fourth Mexican" = i.e., his father was born in Mexico because the United States forced his family out due to his beliefs.

Geez.

Edited 2012-01-06 22:14 (UTC)

So, I took the report not with disgust but with a deal of incredulous and some humor.

My first thought was "Where are the birthers?"

~~Obama's~~ Romney's dad was a foreign national

~~Obama's~~ Romney's mom was born in the US

~~Obama's~~ Romney himself was born in the US

on top of THAT, I want to see how people react to this, as Romney
is essentially saying

"Hey Hispanic vote! I'm trying to lead the party that's been campaigning on building
a wall between our countries. Furthermore MY family fled into YOUR country
to escape conditions but we don't want *you* to do the same"

It should be interesting to see if this will work for or against Romney...

""Hey Hispanic vote! I'm trying to lead the party that's been campaigning on building
a wall between our countries"

If they are voting, wouldn't the U.S. be their country?

First,
Some of those voters have relatives from Mexico, and having people
campaigning on keeping your relative out tends to "sour" the vote.

Second,
Some of the anti-immigration legislation has victimized people
who were already here as citizens -- however, the loose-wording of
the law and the use of racial profiling has (again) hit voters

The point is that the voters dont exist here in a vacuum, and they see
what is happening and what is being said and how they are being caught up
in it as well...

First:
Strangely enough, some of the most anti-ILLEGAL immigration people I know are Hispanics who came here the "hard" way....like in your example some does not mean most.

Second:
Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal and works both ways. (please note, I do not dismiss anecdotal evidence out of hand, just saying)
While I'm not a fan of racial profiling in a vacuum. Profiling works.

You are correct very few things exist in a vacuum. Personally I would like to think that Romney is being honest with his thoughts on border control, and I think this whole deal is a tempest in a teapot; "Oh noes his grandfather fled to Mexico, he's a hypocrite because he doesn't believe in open borders". There are things I don't like about Romney but this isn't one of them :)

um, let's go meta. What does it indicate about his character that he has kept the Paternal Mexican side of the family 'hidden' from the public?

This is the first I've heard of it.

(TIC) I'm shocked that you would think that because you hadn't heard of it, it didn't happen)

Seriously, Jeff pointed out it did come out. I don't remember it either, but I was a Gullianni guy back in 08.

I didn't get all caught up in who and what Obama's father was, or the birther nonsense, and I really don't see the big deal.

Family is ONLY fair game when they are used as candidate props. If a candidate trots out his family for photo op's, they become part of the national conversation as well.

Otherwise, keep them at home.

That you didn't catch the stories initially does not mean they were "hidden."

I certainly didn't know. Neither did anyone else in the community.

Did you know about this, Jeff? Was it common knowledge to you? Did you ever blog about it?

Don't you find this unusual in a time when everyone knows everything family about the candidates?

I did know about this, yes. Mormons escaping religious persecution was not news to me, nor was Mitt's father's birthplace. As it wasn't especially fascinating, I saw no need to write about it.

Im really nervous about Romney making it to the general. It will be a test balloon about whether we liberals support civil liberties because they matter, or instead as Johnson said, because black voters will vote Democratic for the next five generations.

I know there are liberals who think you should use any political weakness available. But if we're willing to throw the political progress of electing JFK under the bus, we're doing it wrong.

(and being a quarter Hispanic, that opinion regarding immigration is very common. Despite a long Democratic history, theyre a pretty conservative demographic So it won't hurt even if it's hypocritical. Especially since he doesn't need to make significant inroads into the Hispanic community.)

Are you worried that Liberals may not vote for Romney because they 'haven't given him a chance'? That's how I'm reading your first paragraph - and assuming I'm not mis-reading it, I dont think it's much of a concern.

Liberals arent going to vote for Romney precisely *because* they've been paying attention to the things he says AND the platform of the party he is trying to represent.

Concerning the Hispanic issue in your last sentence - I hope this voting cycle around, they'll remember the anger and pure xenophobia that came out of the GOP this time around.

AH -- ok, I just had it "click" about what you were saying about Romney.

I assume (now that my coffee is kicking in) you mean the GOP will lock-step vote
for a candidate no matter *who* it is? If so - then yeah, I'm worried too, which
was particularly why a field of so many candidates like THAT was both funny and
worrisome...

No, I'm worried they'll argue conservatives and independents shouldn't vote for Romney because of the religion issue. Campaigns bring out negative campaign ads and I've had friends who think Romney's religion should be exploited to depress his support.

That's what concerns me.

I also hope the Hispanic demographic continues to vote Democratic, but that doesn't change the fact that they're currently a pretty conservative demographic.

I'm not sure what the concern is in real terms here.

Now that the actual primary season is upon us, we can expect to see the Republican field coalesce around Romney and a single Not-Romney. At the moment it looks like Santorum is on deck to be Not-Romney, but if it isn't him it will be someone else with comparable culture warrior credibility.

We can expect that Not-Romney won't criticize Romney directly for being Mormon; they may or may not blow dog whistles about it. There will definitely be some commentary from visible culture warrior commentators. And there will definitely be a vigorous whisper campaign. None of that from liberals, all within the conservative sphere.

But I presume that you're not thinking of liberals criticizing Romney's religion during the primary campaign, because it's a process of mostly intra-conservative conversation. But presuming that Romney becomes the Republican nominee, do you really imagine that Romney's Mormonism will play a part in liberals rhetoric?

Like you, I'd be mortified if it did, for the same reasons.

But I'm not worried about it as a serious possibility. I have a hard time even imagining what it would look like.

Six months, I couldn't imagine it. Then a friend said that she thought liberals should use it, because she was so sick of liberals being such pushovers.

And now chessdev is trying to make hay about Romney's great-grandfather being a polygamist. As though that should have any bearing whatsoever on the immigration debate.

I sympathize with your friend's frustration, though not with her interest in using Romney's religion as the approach. Aside from it being wrong, it also seems like there's no rhetorical way in.

Certainly I don't see Chess' comments as being an exemplar. It's an argument about Romeny's implied hypocrisy about immigration policy, rather than an argument about Romney's religion.

(And while we are on the subject, I don't think it's the strongest argument. It underlines how Republican opposition to immigration is wrongheaded, but you almost have to buy that anti-immigrant policy is a bad idea to find this example persuasive. Perhaps a journalist could ask Romney a question about it it that might be awkward for him to answer, but it doesn't really catch Romney being actively hypocritical. Given that finding arguments about Romney's hypocrisy is a target-rich environment, I don't find this particular point compelling rhetoric.)

If he kept it to immigration, perhaps I could agree. But bringing up that Romney's great-grandfather was a polygamist and needed to flee the nation for selfish, illegal reasons skates that line pretty damn thin.

It's scare-mongering about the weird unnatural religion.

I didn't read it that way, but I will keep my antennae up for that line of argument. If it turns out to turn up again in commentaries on Romney, I will unhappily grant that you called it before I saw it.

I certainly hope it's extreme pessimism on my part as well. But part of keeping the peace at home with my Glen Beck loving dad is agreeing which lines of argument are petty and not up for conversation at the table. So every time I say he doesn't get to call Obama a socialist (to my face at least), I have to promise him that I hold no truck with the kooks who use sexist language against Palin, that McCain was also foreign born, that Romney is being controlled by LDS.

(currently he's backing Santorum because he thinks the liberal media is forcing Romney down the throat of Republicans so they can smear his Mormonism and continue their atheistic bent of turning America against God. Which is a weird new turn because he's never been a religious church goer to begin with.)

Moving to California, I've been suffering a bit of pessimism and culture shock regarding liberals (as opposed to liberalism, but I don't know that people parse the difference).

I'll have people ask me where I'm "really from" because clearly not Texas with such a normal Americanized accent. And I've had people question my ability to do math when I say I'm a quarter Hispanic.

And it's not that I buy into the idea that reverse racism is just as bad as racism. But those moments highlight how many liberals were born into that political ideology, and would mimic the same racist rhetoric they abhor if they were born into different circumstances. Back in Texas, most of my liberal friends were contrarians, which is how they came to be liberals despite their suburban upbringing.

(I think the hate speech vs free speech also falls into this as well. I had a personal matter that mirrored that recent LJ discussion pretty closely, and noticed a real split between liberals who grew up in a liberal community, and those who grew up in a conservative community.)

I know none of this is really here nor there. But I always think it's a good thing to know where people are coming from. It's harder to demonize them. I think going into a brutal campaign season, that's a good thing.

the liberal media is forcing Romney down the throat of Republicans

Of course. It's the only reasonable explanation.

culture shock regarding liberals

I know the feeling. Talking with most liberals makes me embarrassed to call myself a lefty, more often than not. Hell, I went to school at UC Santa Cruz; I've forgotten more about lefty asininity and stupidity than most conservatives will ever know. And most ordinary conservatives are right to think that the left has failed and abandoned them.

Okay, gonna go cry now.

The NBC News piece outright dismisses the point of them fleeing. I'll quote from the article and the OP:

In his public life Mitt Romney has said and written little about his ancestors' history in Mexico. In one oft-repeated quote he said his family left the U.S. for Mexico to escape persecution for their religious beliefs.

In fact, Romney's great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, led that first expedition to escape not persecution but prosecution for polygamy, or what Mormons called ‘plural marriage.’

If you didn't read it as NBC, and in turn chessdev, making it out to be some sort of attempt at a "gotcha!" because of the false equivalency drawn between religious persecution and illegal immigration, I'm honestly curious as to how you read it.

I didn't comment on what

chessdev was implying about immigration, I commented on whether Chess was attacking Romney for being a Mormon; I didn't see it, but I understand how someone might read it as a covert attack in the guise of being about something else.

But since you ask, I think that Chess was going for a point related to what you dismiss as a “false equivalency”. If Obama's background isn't “American enough” for some folks, will they have the same problem with Romney because of some parallels in their backgrounds? If Romney hews to GOP rhetoric about immigration being bad, does that same logic apply to his own family, which emigrated first to Mexico, then back to the US?

I wouldn't call that looking for a gotcha, exactly. Romney isn't responsible for justifying the actions of his ancestors, or even for commenting on them. But it points to how the poetics of immigration seem to be very different for White vs brown people, which lefties think has a troubling odor.

If Obama's background isn't “American enough” for some folks, will they have the same problem with Romney because of some parallels in their backgrounds?

Mainly because Romney was born in the United States via a family that would have stayed in the United States had he not been a victim. Compare that with Obama, who spent a significant portion of his childhood out of the country and appears to actively eschew the "American experience," as it were. But such claims are mostly thrown out by Birthers, who are nuts anyway, so...

If Romney hews to GOP rhetoric about immigration being bad, does that same logic apply to his own family, which emigrated first to Mexico, then back to the US?

This is where the implication comes in that somehow fleeing religious persecution isn't different than illegal immigration. That's what's a little bigoted and annoying.

But it points to how the poetics of immigration seem to be very different for White vs brown people, which lefties think has a troubling odor.

Ugh.

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