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December 07, 2007
The Perfect Pander
Like Matt, I found Romney's speech pretty terrible. But it was certainly a brilliant political move. Today, everyone's talking about Mitt Romney. A week ago, everyone was talking about Mike Huckabee. So the speech worked.
But beneath it's immediate purpose of reversing Romney's slide in Iowa, the speech accurately played the national media. As I argued yesterday, there were really two speeches within it. The first 846 words, which were a Kennedy-esque denunciation of elevating religion into political litmus test, and then the rest of the speech, in which Romney elevated his religion into a litmus test, said his faith, and belief in Christ, ensured that he passed it, and then warned the Christian Right to focus on their real enemy: the secular left.
On Hardball yesterday, this showed itself to be a good strategy. The program kept playing the clip of Romney saying, "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin." Most viewers will experience only the first portion of the speech. Theyll only hear Romney playing Kennedy. But the bits from the second part will undoubtedly receive prominent play within the evangelical community. The speech they will experience is the one in which Romney declares "freedom requires religion." They will hear Romney playing religious warrior, and promising to further destroy the walls between church and state.
Give it up for the guy. After months of clumsy pandering during which he made himself look foolish by trying to have it both ways, Romney succeeded, in his highest profile moment, in having it both ways.
December 7, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Multiple Choice Mitt changed his mind in the middle of a speech.
Posted by: Aaron | Dec 7, 2007 11:08:49 AM
Amazingly enough, the WaPo called him on this:
If, as Mr. Romney correctly says, the country's founders took care not to impose a religious test for any public office, a candidate's belief, or not, in the divinity of Christ ought to be irrelevant.
Where Mr. Romney most fell short, though, was in his failure to recognize that America is composed of citizens not only of different faiths but of no faith at all and that the genius of America is to treat them all with equal dignity. "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom," Mr. Romney said. But societies can be both secular and free. The magnificent cathedrals of Europe may be empty, as Mr. Romney said, but the democracies of Europe are thriving."Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government," Mr. Romney said. But not all Americans acknowledge that, and those who do not may be no less committed to the liberty that is the American ideal.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | Dec 7, 2007 11:13:37 AM
"Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government"
The central idea is good, and is expressed in the Declaration of Independence. endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights It means that basically there are inherent rights and not government-given, constitutional if you will, rights. But cut us a little slack. The DOI says "Creator" not "God", which leaves some room for Mother Nature.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 7, 2007 11:41:15 AM
Shorter Mitt: Mormonism should not be a religious test for office -- Christianity should.
Posted by: lucidity | Dec 7, 2007 11:47:00 AM
lucidity said it perfectly.
perhaps the good to come out of this will be that it will tamp some of huckabee's popularity...as his views seem so much more dangerous and his affability factor seems to be so high recently.
Posted by: jacqueline | Dec 7, 2007 12:06:14 PM
Like Matt, I found Romney's speech pretty terrible. But it was certainly a brilliant political move. Today, everyone's talking about Mitt Romney. A week ago, everyone was talking about Mike Huckabee. So the speech worked.
It remains to be seen whether or not the speech worked. It is sometimes said that there is no such thing as "bad" PR -- but this is surely not the case in politics. I thought Romney was doing pretty well, all things considered. This looks to me like a pretty clear case of rookie overreaction 101. The well-financed, hitherto disciplined, on-message Romney campaign has nearly a month before Iowa to soften up Huckabee's numbers, and they've got plenty of issues with with to work, such as the latter's failure to hate immigrants, and his preference for financing government in real time rather than leaving it to future generations. I don't think it was necessary to go nuclear on the religion issue. Especially when their rival has better ICBMs.
Now, people are talking even more about an "issue" -- Romney's Mormonism -- that really wasn't an issue even to most GOP voters, never mind the electorate as a whole.
We shall see. Maybe all of this helps Romney. But maybe not. And if not, I think it opens the door a bit more widely for a McCain resurrection. I think four or five days ago at least one poll had the Arizona senator in second place in New Hampshire. That's pre-speech.
Posted by: Jasper | Dec 7, 2007 12:06:35 PM
Anybody else catch the reference to "Sweet and Dandy" by the Maytals, off of the soundtrack to The Harder they Come?
Etty in the room a cry
Mama say she must wipe her eye
Papa say she no fi foolish
Like she never been to school at all
It is no wonder
It's a perfect pander
While they were dancing in that bar room last night>
Posted by: Davis X. Machina | Dec 7, 2007 12:08:04 PM
Freedom requires believing that some infinitely powerful dude in the sky has total control over everything.
Posted by: Gore/Edwards 08 | Dec 7, 2007 12:09:42 PM
Sure, Romney did a great job of spinning the kewl kids in the media with his savvyness, but I don't think this will actually help him with Evangelicals, you know, the crowd whose bias against Mormons actually prompted this speech. On that front, I doubt this did much other than prompt any pastors who haven't done so yet to give a sermon on how exactly Satan uses LDS to trick people into going to hell.
Posted by: George Tenet Fangirl | Dec 7, 2007 12:42:10 PM
Romney spun Chris Matthew? Huge surprise there! Matthews loves himself some old -timey religion and good looking men, that he was singing the praises of Romney immediately after the speech is no surprise. Thankfully, Matthews tends to calm down after a couple days and actually does some real discussion on the subject if he hasn't been distracted by another barrel chested hero in the interim, lets hope Monday's show is a more legitimate look at the speech.
Posted by: Fred F. | Dec 7, 2007 12:57:02 PM
I don't think this will actually help him with Evangelicals, you know, the crowd whose bias against Mormons actually prompted this speech.
Yeah, though I wonder how much Mitt really needs to appeal to evangelicals per se, as opposed to just socially and culturally conservative voters. My own experience - FWIW - is that there are A LOT of people who identify as religious, talk about how important God is in their lives, hate abortion and gays, but who from an objective standpoint aren't really all that religious, in the sense of actually going to church on a regular basis and having more than a passing familiarity with the Bible or any but the most infantile theological principles.
Sherri Shepherd Christians, you might call them. These are not people who likely understand the difference between Mormonism and Christianity, and are likely to regard Mormonism as just another Christian sect, like Presbyterians or Methodists.
These people, I think, are who Mitt should be trying to appeal to.
Posted by: Jason C. | Dec 7, 2007 2:16:20 PM
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