Mitt Romney announces
Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, son of former Michigan governor George Romney, followed his father down the Presidential trail this week, calling for a "new American Dream" and a "time of innovation and transformation" in Washington, D.C., in a speech in Michigan announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2008.
I never quite figured out how Romney got established in Massachusetts politics. Michigan is where his father was a popular, moderate-to-liberal two-term governor from 1963-69. While the term "liberal Republican" may seem incomprehensible to younger readers, they existed in large numbers back then, just as passenger pigeons once did. The elder Romney blew his chances for the Republican nomination in 1968 by stating that he had been "brainwashed," i.e., fed a load of crap, by U.S. officials in South Vietnam when he made a fact-finding visit there in August 1967. George Romney went to Vietnam supporting the war and came back a war critic.
Both George and Mitt visited my hometown of Holland, Michigan, during the annual Tulip Time festival in May. I've seen a photo of the boy Mitt with his father at Tulip Time, both dressed in Dutch costumes to march in the Street-Scrubbing Parade (it's a weird place) that opens the festival.
Whatever else Romney may bring to the Presidency has been obscured by the fact that he's a Mormon, i.e., a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. While the Mormons consider themselves a Christian religion, not everybody else does, especially among the rightwing fundamentalists who are the base of today's Republican Party.
The Wikipedia entry on Mitt's father George Romney (linked above) says his parents left Utah for Mexico (where George was born) when the Mormon Church, as a condition of Utah statehood, renounced polygamy. The article doesn't say George came from a polygamous family, but it's the sort of thing that will be the subject of endless chatter in the months to come. That and the more loopy aspects of current-day Mormonism, such as the protective underwear, aka 'temple garments,' that all practicing Mormons are supposed to wear. All religions have their loopy aspects, but those of Mormonism tend to be odder than most.
You probably won't ever find me linking again to an article by the John Birch Society, but this one on Romney's Mormonism is pretty good. Ultimately, Romney isn't going to turn to the 12 Elders for approval of his policies in the unlikely event he's elected President in what should be a bang-up Democratic year. He's conservative, yes, just as other Mormons tend to be conservative. But whether or not he wears temple garments is just as irrelevant as what elementary school Barack Obama attended in Indonesia.