The Mormonism "Cult"

The Values Voters Summit of this past weekend featured an introduction of Texas Governor Rick Perry by a grand poobah of the Southern Baptists who declared Mitt Romney's faith affliation to be that of a "cult."  This has long been the position of the Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant organization in the country, and its roots and prevalence in the south make it far from a fringe element.  To his credit, Jon Huntsman, the former Ambassador to China, who also happens to share Romney's LDS faith, referred to Perry's introducer as, in effect, a bonehead. Romney, for his part, has remained silent while he and his advisors try to chart a path to the nomination by downplaying Iowa and South Carolina, where the numbers of Southern Baptists in the caucus and primary electorate are sufficiently high to dim Romney's prospects on grounds of the Mormon question alone.

It's a sad -- and interesting -- commentary that the gumbas that have been so unfairly anti-Obama, in the process abandoning policy positions held by Republicans for decades, to deny a political victory to the object of their derision would so blatantly self-destruct on a petard of religious bigotry.  But if you live by the sword of intolerance you may well die by the sword of intolerance.  Among the current field of GOP candidates for the nomination, Romney has the best chance of defeating Obama in 2012.  Americans are not ready for Rick Perry or any other of the far-right ayatollahs as their president, so Democrats and Obama supporters shouldn't feel too sorry for the Republican intolerance turned inward.  Nevertheless, it's hardly a source of pride that the best thing the Democratic party and candidates have going for them in 2012 is their Republican opposition.

The Ninety-Nine Percenters

The Occupy Wall Street moment continues into its third week, growing in numbers in lower Manhattan and in kindred demonstrations across the country.  Still not a movement, it resists efforts to categorize and pigeonhole protestors into some preconceived categories.  What is going on is a reawakening -- failing to find from Democratic leaders a populist strategy for countering the effects of four decades of organizing and building by Republicans, these early efforts are aimed primarily to provide an opportunity to realize they are not alone in seeing the system we have as a rigged game.  The presence on Wall St. , symbolizing wealth aplenty, undermines the official "scarcity" narrative that is used to quiet the discontented who realize the "scarcity" ruse is merely a diversionary maneuver to turn attention away from questions and questionable practices in re: distribution.

The baneful effects of partisanship . . .

The phrase used as a title for this post is borrowed from George Washington's farewell address, and it is as relevant today as it was when he warned his colleauges of the ill-effects of putting party ahead of country.  To get us past this moment of paralysis, we need an accurate diagnosis of the cause of the current debilitating polarization, and that itself is far beyond the influence of toxic partisanship to sustain a consensus on how we got here, let alone how to get unstuck.]

Let's begin with the few held by the White House to a great extent: that the problems inherited by the Obama Administration were of such number and severity that their solution would take a 5 to 6 year period, thus making Obama's first term pretty much an iffy proposition.  History suggests that economic downturns rooted in financial free falls take longer to repair than do regular recessions.  So, in fairness, Obama does have a disadvantage he had little hand in creating.  He bears some responsibiliy by hiring the very economic aids whose ideas contributed to the financial break-up in the first place -- Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in particular.  And Obama  demonstrated a deferential attitude to experts on economic issues that diminished confidence in his ability to see how the times called for bolder action than  we got. 

Meanwhile Republicans coalesced around a refusal to allow Obama's campaign promise of bipartisanship come to pass; instead, they vowed unanimous opposition to any proposals favored by Obama and Democrats.  They deprived the President of a single vote for the Stimulus Package and the President helped them in this regard by turning the spending targets to Pelosi and Reid who had fellow Democrats lined up as recipients, giving Republicans good reason to be unsupportive of the Keynesian effort to prime the pump.

What might the President had done differently to secure Republican voters and yet get a stimulus in action:?  Tthat is our next post's topic.