What's Better For Romney-- People Talking About Bainism or About Mormonism?

Romney is absolutely desperate to change the topic to anything and away from what he's hiding in those 23 years of tax returns he showed McCain before being rejected as a suitable running mate. He's now dangling the promise of announcing which stale white bread Republican he'll name as his own running mate. Pawlenty, Thune, Portman... is there any difference? But at least he can take some solace in the fact that most people aren't still talking about him being a tool for a Mormon takeover of the U.S. government. Or are they? A couple weeks ago, there was talk of Mitt's Mormon army mobilizing and earlier this week the NY Times brought up the "M" word again. The Mormon aristocracy-- the ones who call the shots for the entire enterprise-- are, according to the Times, "are joining together in a new effort: delivering the White House to Mitt Romney... These families-- Marriotts, Rollinses, Gardners and others-- have formed a financial bulwark and support network for Mr. Romney at every important point in his political career."

Mr. Romney’s candidacy has produced great pride among many Mormons, known officially as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But for this core group of the religion’s most prominent families, the ties to Mr. Romney go deeper. They share with him not only a faith, but also a dramatic history in which they have scaled the ladder of American society, starting as vilified outsiders and, after helping to settle the American West, rising to the heights of wealth and success within four generations.

To take one concrete measure of their support, records show that roughly two dozen members of Mormon families provided nearly $8 million of the financing for the “super PAC” working to elect Mr. Romney, Restore Our Future, putting them in league with its Wall Street, real estate and energy donors. Prominent Mormons including the JetBlue founder David G. Neeleman and the Credit Suisse chief executive Eric Varvel are on his finance team.

Many of Mr. Romney’s major Mormon backers are tied to businesses with robust agendas in Washington-- lobbying on tax, aviation and tourism policy, according to federal filings-- and have something to gain by having a friend in the White House.

But several of these donors say that their giving has nothing to do with their business interests. And while that is a common refrain among major financial supporters of both parties, in this case the candidacy they are backing represents something bigger as it draws new attention to their religion.

“I think for Mormons, particularly for prominent ones who already feel widely accepted and admired individually, this feels like a chance to also see their church, which they love, accepted and admired institutionally,” said Richard Eyre, a Mormon and a best-selling author who lives in Utah and is a friend of the Romneys.

These Mormon bigwigs want revenge for perceived past injustices... and they want to take over. "[W]e want the world to know about our religion," says the boss of the Marriott chain, one of Romney's biggest financiers after organized crime in China. He thinks Mormons are in "obscurity" and need to come out and Romney taking over the White House will give them a leg up. Another Mormon big shot and multimillionaire, shady Bain corporate raider Kevin Rollins, excuses Mormon clannishness by insisting they've been "beaten up and pushed and kicked around, and through that process they really stuck together." Another one of the sleaziest of Romney's Mormon cronies, Don Stirling helps run the Romney Death Star, the Restore Our Future SuperPAC, which is funded by Mormons, the Macau Triads, and class warfare billionaires and multimillionaires.

The irony in all this Mormon talk, is that the actual founders of the religion would be aghast at Romney's lack of ethics at his obscene greed and deceit and the way he's lived his hypocritical life at odds with their teaching. Ryan Combe is also from a respected and admired Utah Mormon family, but he's a progressive-- and one who takes ethical teaching very seriously. "[I]f Joseph Smith or Brigham Young were preaching today," he told me last month, "I think they would be considered very liberal." Joseph Smith ran for president on a progressive program-- a program very much at odds with today's Republican Party-- and with Mitt Romney. Smith was aggressively devoted to Separation of Church and State and very much against slavery. And when it came to the GOP's and Mitt Romney's adherence to the economics of selfishness and greed...

"The course pursued by men of business in the world has a tendency to make a few rich, and to sink the masses of the people in poverty and degradation. Too many of the elders of Israel take this course. No matter what comes they are for gain-- for gathering around them riches..." (Brigham Young, An Approach to Zion, Hugh Nibley). The economic policies pursued by the GOP of today and advocated by Mitt Romney, are without a doubt the single most blatant conflict between GOP and the teachings of the LDS Church and its leaders... Joseph Smith and Brigham Young spoke often about the idea of economic justice and one need only to look at the expansive welfare system of the LDS Church to realize the importance they place on protecting the poor and underprivileged. "Here are those who begin to spread out, buying up all the land they are able to do, to the exclusion of the poorer ones who are not so much blessed with this world's goods, thinking to lay foundations for themselves only, looking to their own individual families, and those who are to follow them (Joseph Smith, Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, by Hugh Nibley). Joseph Smith felt so strongly that this was not the way to "build Zion" that he went as far as to say that, "if there is not repentance... you will be broken up and scattered from this promised land."