One of the strangest recent developments in the GOP presidential race is the insistence from Religious Right leaders who have been hostile to both Mitt Romney and his Mormonism that, should Romney become the Republican nominee, it will be the Left and the Media that will launch bigoted attacks against his faith.
Bryan Fischer has had it out for Romney because he meekly denounced Fischer's unmitigated bigotry at the Values Voter Summit, and Fischer has been warning that a Romney nomination will mean "the end of the Republican party as a political force" ever since.
At the same time, Fischer has also been trying to use Romney's faith against him but struggling to do so without resorting to the open bigotry that is his standard operating procedure because even he knows that blatant anti-Mormon bigotry is not popular among the Religious Right.
Which explains his latest column, in which he says that Romney refused to attend the Thanksgiving Family Forum because "he did not want to do anything that would highlight the theological gulf between his religious convictions and those of the orthodox Christians on the platform."
But this is really just cover for Fischer to go after Romney's faith by imagining a scenario in which it is the "winger-left media" that will attack "the more unusual aspects of Mormon theology":
One thing conservatives should be mindful of is that even if they hesitate at this stage of the game to talk publicly about the more unusual aspects of Mormon theology, the winger-left media will share no such delicacy should Romney get the nomination.
Should he become the conservative standard-bearer, we will be barraged with stories about the unorthodox theological views of Mitt Romney and the LDS church. The left will make sure America knows that Mormons believe that there is not only a Heavenly Father but a Heavenly Mother, with whom the Heavenly Father sires spirit children.
The left will make sure America knows that Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan, as offspring of the Heavenly Father and Mother, are brothers. The left will make sure Americans know that Mormons believe that both Satan and his brother Jesus presented plans of salvation to the Heavenly Father, and that Satan rebelled when the Heavenly Father chose the plan of Jesus.
They won’t hesitate to probe Romney on whether he believes that American Indians are the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel and whether he believes Jesus visited this continent to appear to them at one point. (Advances in DNA testing have proven that there is no Hebrew lineage among the native American tribes.) He will be probed on whether he believes that Jesus will return to Independence, Missouri, as the LDS church believes, rather than Jerusalem, as the Bible teaches.
So, if Romney secures the nomination, conservatives need to prepare themselves for what will be an all-out theological onslaught from the left on Mitt Romney’s theology. Remember that they were relentless in hounding Michele Bachmann about her theological views on submission in marriage. They were relentless in hounding Attorney General John Ashcroft about his Pentecostal beliefs. They won’t hesitate to bash Romney about the head and shoulders regarding his religious convictions, all in their effort as Ministers of Propaganda for the regime to re-elect Barack Obama.
If Fischer thinks he is fooling anyone with this pathetic charade, he is less self-aware than we ever could have imagined.
