Anti-Mormon Calls Causing Infighting, Trouble Within GOP Field

Days after anti-Mormon phone calls were first reported in New Hampshire and Iowa, the source behind the calls remains a mystery, causing speculation and infighting between the campaigns.

Even with evidence suggesting that, in a bit of political schadenfreude, Romney's people may have undertaken the endeavor - in hopes of casting his Mormonism in a sympathetic light - focus has shifted to the other GOP candidates.

One name increasingly thrown around among Republican insiders is the guy nipping at Romney's heels in the Iowa polls: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"Who has the most to gain by this," one operative told the Huffington Post. "It's Huckabee. If Romney were to fall he would be the conservative option to Rudy Giuliani."

A source with another Republican presidential campaign added fuel to the fire by pointing out that the Huckabee's statement on the matter - "The Huckabee campaign does not condone this type of activity" - isn't exactly an "outright" denial.

"Of course it is a denial," Huckabee's spokesperson, Alice Stewart, told the Huffington Post. Moreover, it's worth noting that few if any political connections have surfaced linking the former governor and Western Wats, the company that made the calls.

Other candidates have been equally adamant in insisting their non-involvement. Romney's campaign, for its part, has come out forcefully against speculation that the Mormon candidate could behind the anti-Mormon calls.

"That's preposterous," Romney's spokesman, Kevin Madden, told The Politico. "Emphatically, I reject any insinuation that we would support phone calls attacking our own campaign," he added to the Salt Lake Tribune.

And so, general confusion over who's to blame persists. Still, there is one consensus emerging: that the guilty party would be better served getting it out into the open now rather than as the primary approaches.

"If it was Huckabee or someone else like Romney, they would be better off cutting their losses and saying they were sorry the day before Thanksgiving rather than Christmas eve," a Republican pollster told the Huffington Post. "Because if the Attorney General in New Hampshire does investigate this, and they don't need to do a lot to investigate - it could get messy."

Comments

[BigBagel]

Muslims engage in polygamy and Jews used too.

[elkabong]

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."

- Thomas Paine

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

- Thomas Paine

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

- Thomas Paine

"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession."

- Abraham Lincoln

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

- John Adams

[elkabong]

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."

- James Madison

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."

- James Madison

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

- James Madison

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

- Thomas Jefferson

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot.... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."

- Thomas Jefferson

"...religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

- Thomas Jefferson

"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."

- Benjamin Franklin

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."

- Benjamin Franklin

[johnhummel]

I am honestly surprised by the anti-Mormon comments here by my fellow progressives.

Did the Mormon church once have polygamy nearly 200 years ago? Sure - and the Catholic church once tortured scientists. And 300 years from now, the Muslim religion will look back and the current era and go "Damn, there sure was some stupid back then."

Most of the Mormons I've known are pretty decent people. They believe in Jesus, yeah, they have those young guys knock door to door which is annoying, but they don't have massive global denying claims, and generally stay out of politics from the pulpit because they actually believe in the separation of church and state.

So why the hating? Harry Reid is a Mormon as well, but we only get annoyed at him for not standing up harder against the Bush administration, not because of his religion. I personally don't care for Romney not because he's a Mormon, but because he's a flip flopper who will say anything to get elected and extend the torture acts.

[DELICIOUS]

PRO-WRESTLING? LIKE "RAW" SHOWS JUST HOW LOW THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE GOP HAVE FALLEN. TALK ABOUT OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL. MEN SLAMMING CHAIRS INTO ONE ANOTHER, KICKING, TOSSING OUT OF THE RING AND ALL OTHER TYPES OF VIOLENCE AND THEN YOU WONDER WHY CRIME HAS INCREASED AND RED NECKS ARE THE CHIEF OFFENDERS. THEY HAVE NO DAMN SENSE AND ARE PROUD OF IT.

[CheneysACoward]

Shows just how fucked we are allowing religion to be part of an election in the first place. Just proves how "wonderful" all that religious brain washing was for us......made us like school children till death.

[Mort]

Funny how campaigns bring out the ugliest sides of people who should know better. Back stabbing, gossipping, hateful, bigots. This isn't celebrity death match. It's not a race for the most money, power or greatest pandering. Or a race to bury your opponents. Well, actually, it is! But it's supposed to be where we learn who is the better leader and who will represent our interests best.

As each race gets nastier, it becomes more evident that the real losers are us!

[hsk01945]

Call me crazy.. but I'll also bet dollars to donuts that "Romney's people may have undertaken the endeavor - in hopes of casting his Mormonism in a sympathetic light."

And in my opinion, Romney will do anything, and say anything that he thinks will get him elected.

[withowlseyewatch]

http://www.lhvm.org/vid_lvp.htm

[withowlseyewatch]

It's understood that Romney does not practice polygamy and that mainline Mormons in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saint, to which he claims to belong, no longer teaches the principle of polygamy. Never the less, it is taught and practiced today in polygamist communities built by the fundamentalist who faithfully follow the teachings of Joseph Smith.

What is not clear is the extent to which Romney knows or pretends to not know about the closed polygamist communities that enslave girls and women in lives of sexual abuse. The government itself turns a blind eye to the sexual preditors spreading across the plains.

The sexual exploitation of children by priests in the Catholic church pales by comparison to that of the Mormon fundementalists and those in the main line church who secretly practice polygamy.

It isn't enough for Romney simply avoid the issue by stating that he is main line Mormon and doesn't practice polygamy. His silence enables pedophiles to exploit, molest and claim young girls as wives to satisfy their perversions.

Romeny will never stand up straight enough to tell the American people that the fundmentalist church is a magnet to those who see the advantage of the teachings that men are entitled to many wifes.

Watch this incredible movie to hear what women raised in polygamist communities have to say.

Lifting the Veil of Polygamy
http://www.lhvm.org/vid_lvp.htm

If it's true and Romeny and the main line priesthood participate in the silencing and denial of the abuse of girls and women in the name of God and for the sake of becoming Gods, then it stands to reason that as president of the United States, Romeny will stand by as the polygamist unleash their movement and enable the pedophile beyond imagination.

[LindaJay]

While I think this kind of polling is despicable, I'm amazed that Romney would be surprised by this. He's in a party of extremists, rascists, and Christian fundamentalists. Has he ever listened to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, etc. This kind of crap is their normal schtick. What is the saying about if you lie down with dogs, you're going to get fleas? Did he really think these were going to overlook his religion and not use it against him?

[Trittydi]

You reap what you sow.
*

[Boadicea]

Every day, I become more amazed by how gullible so many on the left are. How can anyone believe, after all the speeches, endorsing, cheerleading, etc. that so many Democrats, including presidential hopefuls, did for the Iraq war, that it is all the fault of Republicans?

Many Democrats let Americans down.

Honestly, some people can't think for themselves at all.