Lockstep Mormon Voters Helped Clinch Arizona Victory For Romney... Can They Do The Same Thing Nationwide?

Tuesday night Romney swept every single county in Arizona's Republican primary, although he still failed to reach the holy grail-- 50% of the total votes cast. Only 6% of the state's population is Mormon and Romney only has a few dozen cousins living there. But the Mormons have a disproportionately large impact on Republican primaries because they are faithful voters and because they vote in a solid bloc. Absolutely insane to get one of their own into the White House, Mormons made up about 15% of the primary vote this year-- and more than 90% of them voted for Romney. Remember, the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was murdered while he was running for president. Since then it has practically been a tenet of their religion that they needed to capture the White House. On Tuesday the Salt Lake City Tribune explored the historical relationship between Mormonism and the Republican Party. Now one of the most rigidly Republican voting blocs, the Mormons saw the Republicans as their enemies when the party first started-- and the Republicans felt the same way about the Mormons. In fact, it was because of the GOP-- and their anti-polygamy policies-- that the Romney family renounced the U.S. and fled to Mexico to begin their lives anew as Mexican citizens. Today Mitt Romney has hundreds of cousins living south of the border.

As Mitt Romney presses his bid for the Republican nomination for president, lost on many Americans is how his Mormon faith played an important role as foil in the early days of the Grand Old Party-- and how its first candidates catapulted to power in part by whipping up anti-Mormon sentiments.

“If you like irony, you’ve got to love history,” says Utah historian Will Bagley. “Polygamy made Mormons into a national punching bag during the 1850s.”

The Republican Party launched in 1854 as an anti-slavery party and quickly seized on growing concern with Mormons in the Utah Territory taking on multiple wives.

The GOP’s first party platform in 1856 took direct aim at polygamy, placing it in the same sinister frame as slavery in the hope of cultivating the votes of Christians wary of the spread of these dual threats to the republic.

“It is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism-- polygamy, and slavery,” the party declared as it emerged on the national stage for the first time.

Later on, Republicans used their congressional power to wipe away any secular power Mormon leaders had in the Utah Territory and were the main backers of a law that disincorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

LDS Church leaders, for their part, harbored ill will toward the Republican Party, urging followers to back the Democrats.

“We call upon you to stand firm to the principles of our religion in the coming contest for president,” read a letter from LDS Church President Brigham Young and other leaders as published in the abolitionist newspaper, The National Era, on Nov. 20, 1856. “Our duty is plain. There are two principal parties in the country-- one is for us, the other against us.”

The relationship between Mormons and Republicans eventually flipped-- morphing into the current-day landslide of LDS support for the conservative party. But things got a lot worse in the relationship before they got better.

...The GOP’s take on social issues, such as abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and gay marriage, drew Mormons into the conservative fold beginning in the 1970s.

Church apostle Ezra Taft Benson, who supported the right-wing John Birch Society and served as Agriculture secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower, helped further push his fellow Mormons into the conservative camp.

A report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in January showed that about 74 percent of Mormons lean toward the Republican Party and 66 percent of them call themselves conservative.

The oppressed were all too happy to become the oppressors and today the Mormons, rather than remember when they were victims of bigots have become one of the nation's most virulently bigoted groups themselves. Republican Mormons have led the Republican Party's anti-gay jihad and were in great part responsible for Proposition 8 in California, where millions of Mormon dollars turned the tide against equality. Still, the Tribune reminds its readers, "While the bond between Republicans and Mormons has grown, there remains a significant segment of GOP voters-- mainly Protestant evangelicals like Southern Baptists-- that has reservations about voting for a Mormon candidate."