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Good on McCain for apologizing for this. As I said last week, these types of attacks would not be tolerates if they were directed towards Catholics or Protestants, so why should they be for Mormons? Although Romney supporters like to claim that McCain is secretly orchestrating some vast anti-Mormon whisper campaign, it would make no sense to publicly apologize like this if that were the case. McCain is very well regarded by Arizona Mormons and one of his biggest supporters, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah is also a Mormon. Why would he seek to alienate those supporters in such a dubious and ham-handed way, especially in light of McCain’s first hand knowledge of what a real whisper campaign is all about
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
LJ,
Couple points:
1. IT would make perfect sense for him to apologize if he is orchestrating things.
2. I wouldn’t be so quick to say McCain is popular with AZ mormons, because trust me he is not. From those who I know who are LDS and active in AZ politics, there is a huge disdain for him. Most of that has to do with inter party politics and his reputation for dirty tricks.
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
[...] “McCain Apologizes to Romney Over Aides Mormon Comment [...]
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Jason,
1. Please. Stop with the conspiracy theories. It doesn’t make you look good.
2. McCain received well over 70% support from Arizona Mormons in his 2004 re-election campaign. To me that would qualify as being popular.
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:46 pm
LJ,
I consider Rudy!’s apology to be sincere.
McCain’s, not so much. The guy has a track record in the Senate for handing out a dozen apologies a day. And his campaign staff have been caught making anti-mormon comments for a long while now. If McCain were serious this would have been put to a stop.
June 22nd, 2007 at 6:27 pm
LJ,
1. You got incident after incident of anti-Mormon stuff out of people associated with McCain. At some point people just start connecting dots. If I were Romney I would accept the apology, knowing full well that one is due.
2. 70%? Remember 90% of LDS are conservative. That means 20% of LDS members in Arizona refused to vote for the Senator out of their own party. It’s not like 70% chose McCain of Romney in an AZ senatorial primary. He lost 30% of LDS conservatives in a general. That’s not wide support, that’s 70% voting the party line not for the guy who most LDS Arizonan Mormons active in politics strongly dislike.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:39 am
murphy what did Rudy apologize for? Do tell?
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:43 am
It wouldn’t suprise me at all actually if he were. politics is politics.
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
LJ,
There are two well-known truisms that apply to organizations. They are:
(1) “Birds of a feather flock together”.
(2) “Any organization will take on the chief characteristics of its leader.”
It was McCain in 2000 that played the religious bigotry card with his diatrides against Evangelicals as “Agents of Intolerance”. When given a chance during that campaign to take it back, he insisted that he meant every word. He let it stand and didn’t appologize for it for a full six years.
Why should it then come as a big surprise that a huge chunk of the attacks upon Romney’s faith from the right tends to come from McCain supporters? McCain doesn’t have to actively lead or direct this effort. It just happens because that is the way he has behaved in the past, and his people are only acting the way their leader has acted.
I find it encouraging that McCain is finally (and I do mean finally. This has been going on months) apologizing for these attacks and insisting his people walk the high road. I respect him a lot more for doing it.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that every McCain follower has the worst of McCain’s traits. That is silly. Nor am I saying that none of the other candidates have these sorts of supporters. I hope that I am not that naive. However, I am saying that is should not be a surprise that there will be a bigger percentage of McCain’s followers that do these sorts of things than most other candidates. It is just the nature of organizations as stated above.
Therefore, I truly have a hard time believing that McCain is orchastrating this. I would hazzard a guess and say that those who believe this probably like to believe in conspiracies. I have little faith in conspiracies. Secret conspiracies tend to lose their secrecy as soon as there are more people involved than just one.
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
I’m betting that eventually the attack-apologize cycle will speed up. McCain will be saying “I apologize for what I’m about to say about Gov. Romney’s cultish, demonic religion.”
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Romney is publicly objecting to these attacks today.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8PUMJ4O2&show_article=1&cat=0