Elephants at the party and the GOP's Mormon problem

There is a saying that when elephants start dancing, mice get out of the way.

The GOP's most elaborate and embarrassing dance steps yet are for placating their large evangelical component. My feeling is that party leadership would prefer to condemn any hint of religious bigotry toward otherwise qualified candidates such as Romney. But instead they avoid it, hoping to keep peace with this feisty faction rather than risk its wrath themselves. And wrath is truly the word--this group is famous for it. And often they confuse the wrath of God with their own. They can turn any issue, seemingly as innocent as where people buy their toothpaste, into one of imminent hellfire for any unsuspecting discount shoppers, as they did in a recent documentary.

Most conservative leaders and strategists don't deny that some party constituents have deliberately sabotaged elections of otherwise viable Mormon GOP candidates--handing congressional seats and governorships to democrats by default. Beyond that, it starts getting tricky because, fairly so, people reject being broadly characterized when there is unpopular behavior involved.

To get beyond that tediousness, I will try sound as though I do not wish to speak definitively for all members of these religious groups or even know exactly what to call them. So because I know that ignorance about my religion and who exactly comprises it causes obvious mistakes, I will at least try to admit a certain amount of ignorance about who these groups are or what they call themselves--purposely avoiding overly-specific labels or absolute certainty about why their members do certain things (like picketing my church services, for example, which I know that someone does).

Whoever these exact people are and whatever they are called (evangelicals will suffice here until someone better informs me), the results, when they become politically active in the name of religion, are clear. Many examples could bolster my case but one is sufficiently illustrative: When Matt Salmon was running neck and neck for governor of Arizona in 2002, his Democratic opponent eventually gained the upper hand after a group of concerned citizens put banners on his billboards with the nasty suggestion to 'vote Mormon.'

The GOP's glossing over this problem as an unfortunate but inevitable reality isn't necessary, and the longer they do, the more candidates will be sacrificed to an appetite for religious ideological purity that is not appropriate in politics. If it is instead confronted once and for all, everyone will benefit--everyone except for those with indefensibly bigoted positions, of course. And history is not kind to those who are caught defending such positions in the name of any excuse. Consider how civil rights activists treat past historical figures that even tolerated the status quo about race relations--ultimately, we are held to a higher standard, the right standard.

And why should the GOP continue to risk an unfavorable association with those that they don't even support? It certainly should not be because of something as lame as never getting around to raising the issue. The issue being whether they are willing to hand over the reigns of the party that values a broad religious tent (the only party that does), to the left, whose leadership would ban everyone's sacred practices with Marxist zeal. Would this sacrifice be worth it simply so a privileged few can exorcise a personal religious beef?

Well as unfortunate as it is, the party leaders prefer to avoid this confrontation like they would avoid kicking a bees' nest, leaving them quite free to contaminate the reputation of the larger party with rhetoric about faiths (only including Mormons, but actually encompassing Islam and most bravely even Catholicism) that evangelicals happen to think are 'heretical.' Party leadership claim relative powerlessness in the face of such powerful beliefs, but why evangelicals even get to label heresy, and why placement of that label on candidates during elections is even appropriate at all, is a matter that they can definitively decide if they have the stomach for the unpleasant task.

Out of the context of this particular election (where they can avoid any more conceded larger point by insisting that the problem is actually Mitt himself and perhaps Mormonism itself), if the GOP could possibly drop the kid gloves they would do well to once and for all pose this question: can individual religious beliefs of any party constituents receive larger party sanction in any way under any circumstances?

If asked and answered in the affirmative, the question will simply mean that the party ceases to be a political party and starts to be a religion. Are there those who actually might prefer us to have religious elections every four years? That is something that does get said about the right, so we had better not do anything to confirm it if it doesn't fit. Most believers in the party itself do NOT want to give up the hope of reaching broad ideological consensus among those of different religions, but if they want to substitute that consensus for a future contest between narrow religious sects, they should by all means permit such internal squabbles. But I hope they welcome the party's pejorated reputation resulting from giving the right to religious ideological purification to a group that claims hellfire as the destination of a large number of the electorate.

And I mention that fact not because it is a point of religious contention with me personally (because it is--I don't think those who don't think as I do are going to hell, and I especially wouldn't relish the thought.) But rather I mention their curious focus on doom for the unbeliever because in my opinion when evangelical doctrine is scrutinized like they themselves would scrutinize Mormon doctrine now, is what won't go over particularly well with all of the supposed 'damned' voters (most of them). It turns out, Mormons are only a small number of the 'un-elect.' In fact, some particular brands of evangelical brethren are not even mutually assured salvation it seems, depending on who has irritated whom recently.

And evangelical belief in who may be hellbound goes beyond, in my opinion, their mere objective judgment of it in my opinion; it actually seems quite important to some religious persuasions that their fellow human beings are destined for eternal suffering. And one of the reasons they consider Mormons heretical is they don't share this feeling with them. When my oldest son was four he attended a 'non denominational' preschool. When he questioned, mildly, that those born in India or Africa and who would never hear Jesus Christ's name mentioned should have to suffer like any unbeliever, he was kicked out of the program. I am not making that up. She said she couldn't tolerate heresy in her home. And what was his heresy? My son simply thought that others' suffering seemed unfortunate and unfair in his mind. So the definition of a nonheretical doctrine must be one that also maintains a properly enthusiastic attitude about the damnation of others, and doesn't just acknowledge the fact of it.

In their most comfortable expression these non-heresies, evangelicals often say that Catholicism, just like Mormonism, ‘isn’t really Christian.’ But what evangelicals often say among friends or while teaching preschool children wouldn't ever be as surprising as their liberty to pass such notions for public political ones. Perhaps it is good that the GOP does not scrutinize all done in the name of private expressions of faith--because it is true that politics shouldn't be about such things. But the problem is that they are the only ones that don't currently use smearing someone with any associated religious belief as a strategy in politics. Allowing that kind of scrutiny of Mormons alone, if they allow any at all, will eventually sanction the scrutiny of all religious members of their party by democrats if Huckabee were to get the nomination by running on an anti-Mormon ticket.

So the question about Romney in particular this year shouldn't be whether Southern or Iowan evangelicals will excuse him for what they find problematic about Mormon doctrine. The question the GOP should make sure it asks and answers before sacrificing one more Mormon candidate like him is whether--in a world where any beliefs associated with a candidate's religion are mete to rule out his candidacy--evangelicals will fare any better with their critics than the Mormons do with now with theirs.

They should hope so because refusing to deal with this issue will hasten the day when religious beliefs are held up for approval right along with the candidate's other qualifications. Democrats will eagerly encourage any sense among the electorate that the whole politics thing is actually about what attitudes and prejudices they might have about this or that faction of the right. They would love it if rather than having a debate about conservative principles, which as a party we all think will win every time they are actually tried, the electoral process should instead be about whether the public shares individual religions' positions about Catholicism, or even which principles they think should be basic to Christianity itself. Of course no one will agree about any faith issue in a political election--that forum for discussing them isn't appropriate.

And thus the vote for no religion at all will win the day. Why didn't Marx himself think of anti-Mormonism as a way to have the populace vote against religious expression? It would have been quite effective if it had been tried just this way.

How far does it get the GOP to not deal with where this is all headed, when the reality is that if Huckabee were to win the nomination, someone on the left will waste no time pointing out that his denomination believes that Catholics aren’t Christian, and thus along with Mormons, Jews and Muslims, probably 95 percent of the world’s population is going to hell? Aside from that bleak statistic not being very enthusiastic on the accomplishment of the all-important work of creationism of the evangelicals' God, this opinion just won't be something that wins elections. And so unless GOP leaders actually feel comfortable voicing those types of opinions they better be prepared to at least deal with them, because by association, most people will think they share them.

For now the GOP is trying to bide time, allowing this large, loud and powerful portion of their base to skate by on this one. But the risks of failing to maintain the ideal of religious tolerance that the larger party embraces are dire--and GOP leaders that attempt to save themselves while this group publicly embarrasses the rest of us (elephants really shouldn't dance at all, frankly) will like mice, look cowardly and small.