Is There An Amorality To Romney's 47% Comment-- Or Something Much Worse?

When I first saw the secret Romney tape at $50,000 a plate fundraiser in the mansion of sex orgy king and vulture capitalist Marc Leder, I figured this would really hurt Romney with people of faith. I don't think I've ever heard a message from a presidential  candidate more inimical to Jesus Christ than the divisive claptrap that Romney was spewing about 47% of Americans. 47% of Americans, by the way, was (on Sept. 1 of this year) 147,773,640 people. That's a helluva lot of moochers for the Republicans to ignore and not be concerned about. But Ayn Romney gets pissed off if anyone dares criticize her husband. We don't know how lucky we are her husband has deigned to take time away from his life of predatory capitalism to run for president, a degrading step down for the Romney clan. "Stop it," she shrieked menacingly at her husband's critics. Not that that's stopping right-wing Republicans already distancing themselves from the GOP debacle coming on November 6. Peggy Noonan's latest undercuts Romney's most positive attribute, that he's a skilled manager. Of course he isn't... like so many CEOs, he's a propped up, stumbling dud and incompetent. "This week I called it incompetent," she reminded us, "but only because I was being polite. I really meant 'rolling calamity'." And she lists 7 of the more calamitous things dragging Romney down into electoral ignominy:

1. Mr. Romney came out of the primaries "a damaged and flawed candidate." Voters began to see him as elitist, rich, out of touch. "Here the Democrats' early advertising was crucial." Newt Gingrich hurt too, with his attacks on Bain.

2. The Democrats defined Mr. Romney "before he had a chance to define himself." His campaign failed in "not doing a substantial positive media buy to explain who Mitt Romney is and what kind of president he might be."

3. "Perceptions of the economy are improving." Unemployment is high, but the stock market has improved, bringing 401(k)s with it.

4. Obama's approval ratings are up five to six points since last year. He is now at roughly 49% approval, comparable to where President Bush was in 2004.

5. "The president had a strong convention and Romney a weak one." The RNC failed "to relaunch a rebranded Romney and create momentum."

6. Team Romney has been "reactive," partly because of the need for damage control, but it also failed to force the Obama campaign to react to its proposals and initiatives.

7. The "47%" comment didn't help, but Mr. Romney's Libya statement was a critical moment. Team Romney did not know "the most basic political tenet of a foreign crisis: when there is an international incident in which America is attacked, voters in this country will (at least in the short term) rally around the flag and the President. Always. It is stunning that Team Romney failed to recognize this."

Furious, Ayn Romney challenged her to "get in the ring" herself and run for president if she thinks it's so easy. "This is hard," said the pampered, spoiled princess of trashy white bread self-entitlement. Peggy Noonan is a pundit; they rarely run for office. But let's get back to a more important point when we all first saw Romney's attack on the core message of Jesus Christ. Where was the criticism from the country's religious leaders? I don't mean the hucksters and charlatans from the fake religions on the fringes of society. I mean crackpot Satanists like Pat Robertson, Bryan Fischer, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, who lead unsuspecting Christians astray with their hate-filled messages of greed and avarice, naturally agree with Bishop Romney. But where are the mainline Christian leaders? Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't heard about any mainstream Christian leaders calling Romney out for his hateful, anti-Jesus message. Is that how morally bankrupt they've become?

Not long ago, we talked with a secular Mormon running for Congress in northern Utah, Ryan Combe who told us a lot about Mormonism as a force for progressive ideals. This week, a Mormon scholar, Gregory Prince, penned a piece for HuffPo that landed him in that MSNBC video above, Mitt Romney Is Not The Face Of Mormonism. He too was mortified by Romney's willingness to spit in the faces of over 140 million of his fellow Americans who aren't wealthy like he is. He went from being a Romney supporter to someone who is eager to do what he can to keep Romney out of the White House.

Having been a missionary myself, I know the formative power of two years of missionary service. Having served as an assistant to one bishop and four stake presidents-- and Romney served as bishop and stake president-- I know the even greater formative power of those offices. I understand completely what his father George meant when he said, "I am completely the product of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." That face of Mormonism is the one that calls on some of its members, particularly bishops and stake presidents, to devote as many hours gratis to their church jobs as they do to their professional jobs. It is the one that summons up extraordinary acts of love, compassion and generosity, often in response to the deepest tragedies of life-- and death.

But it is not the one that dismisses out-of-hand half the population of the United States by saying, "My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." As a bishop and stake president, Romney worried about those very people. Indeed, he worried far more about them, and spent far more time and means in assisting them, than the others in his flock who were more fortunate.

The very basis of Mormon community, stretching back to the earliest years of Mormonism nearly two centuries ago, is that the more able have a sacred obligation to assist the less able. That sense of physical community was institutionalized in the Church's Welfare Program, which sprang out of the Great Depression as an exemplary and effective means of combining church and government assistance not only to give to those in need, but also to help them to help themselves. Any who have visited Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, as did the producers of a recent "Rock Center" documentary on MSNBC, cannot help but be impressed with what we have attempted, for over seven decades, to accomplish through what is now an international network of church facilities and volunteers.

Judge Mitt Romney as you will, and vote for or against him as you will; but do not judge Mormonism on the basis of the Mitt Romney that was unveiled to the public this week. He is not the face of Mormonism.

It would certainly be awesome to watch Dr. Prince debate Ayn Romney. But I'm guessing she'd prefer mud-wrestling. It's more who she is under the silk taffeta Oscar de la Renta dresses. And if you think the GOP isn't going to close ranks behind shunned-for-a-minute-and-a-half Todd Akin, you don't know the GOP.