Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Faithful Choose Romney?

Fred Thompson told Christian conservatives at their Value Voters rally that, right after being inaugurated, he would “go in the Oval Office and close the door and pray for the wisdom to know what was right.”

Judging from the straw poll taken there, many of the most devout would be praying, too. God knows that most non-believers would be on their knees if the offhand, careless and seemingly senile actor/politician became President, ready to invade Iran and do who-knows-what to the Constitution.

The Democrats in this long pre-season have been uninspiring, to say the least, but the Republican field broke all records for smarm in wooing what they consider their Base this weekend.

In the end, it was Mitt Romney, the flip-flopper, who won their votes if note their hearts, closely followed by the preacher Mike Huckabee, who trumped all by saying, “I come today as one not who comes to you, but as one who comes from you. You are my roots.”

In the hall, most of the audience voted for Huckabee, but Romney’s campaign workers may have used Mammon to get enough supporters online to give their Mormon a narrow victory, with Ron Paul placing third and Thompson fourth.

The unreality of it all was highlighted by Rudy Giuliani, who is leading in all the national polls, finishing in eighth place behind Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter and Sam Brownback, who has dropped out of the race.

In this Presidential race, the issue of faith may be taking some funny turns.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems to me there's a bit of a double standard here.

Remember how Romney said, a while back, that it's important for the White House to be occupied by a person of faith? A little later on, his supporters got indignant when questions were raised about his religious beliefs. As if it's not important whether a candidate for the highest office in the land believes a semi-literate con man in the 19th century was led by an angel to golden plates that said Jesus visited America, and all the rest of the rubbish that's in a religious faith that has a history of racism and crazy magical thinking.

If people like Romney are going to insist that faith is so goddamn important, then they bloody well shouldn't complain when someone questions - indeed, criticizes - their precious faith.

Mike said...

The poll, it turns out was a complete joke. Looks like Romney bought the result. A story at www.politico.com has the poop on this bogus poll.

Anonymous said...

To elaborate on the comment above for those who don't go on to read other stories, Huckabee won the staw poll of those actually there. Romeny sent out a mass email to supporters to get them to vote on line. Romney managed to barely beat Huckabee on the on line vote. It is also not surprising that Ron Paul did tremendoudly better in the on line vote than in the vote of those actually attending.