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his episode features a panel discussion of the potential candidacies of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman as they consider a run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Have American attitudes towards Mormonism shifted significantly since Romney’s first campaign was often sidetracked by the “Mormon Question”? Has the Church’s involvement with Prop 8 helped or hurt the Mormon image for Republican voters? Does Glenn Beck being a high-profile Mormon have any effect on the potential electability of LDS candidates? Please enjoy host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks, Jenny Nettesheim, and Jennifer Liddell as they discuss these and other issues related to Mormonism and today’s politics. The podcast also contains an update on current protests and debates in Wisconsin regarding collective bargaining for public employees.
his episode features a panel discussion of the potential candidacies of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman as they consider a run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Have American attitudes towards Mormonism shifted significantly since Romney’s first campaign was often sidetracked by the “Mormon Question”? Has the Church’s involvement with Prop 8 helped or hurt the Mormon image for Republican voters? Does Glenn Beck being a high-profile Mormon have any effect on the potential electability of LDS candidates? Please enjoy host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks, Jenny Nettesheim, and Jennifer Liddell as they discuss these and other issues related to Mormonism and today’s politics. The podcast also contains an update on current protests and debates in Wisconsin regarding collective bargaining for public employees.
Comments 13
I would love to be able to vote for a Mromon Presidential candidate but Harry Reid won’t run! Even though I never vote GOP, I could have maybe voted for Mitt 1.0 when he was in MA running for governor. I could never vote for Mitt 2.0 re-made as a candidate that will appeal to the most radical elements of the GOP. He has made some very fundemental change to appeal to the conservative christian voter who will NEVER vote for him anyway because of his religion. He would have been better off sticking to the moderate positions that made him an electable Republican in MA of all places.
Maybe Huntsman will learn from Romney’s mistakes. Although, I really believe that any successful national Mormon candidate will be a conservative Democrat. We Democrats don’t care about about religion! I would just love to see the Church forced to rally around a Brother Democrat! Maybe Marlin Jensen can be released and give it a shot!
Imagine, a Mormon being concerned about “radical elements”! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…TOO RIDICULOUSLY HILARIOUS.
“We Democrats don’t care about about religion! I would just love to see the Church forced to rally around a Brother Democrat!”. Bill, the second sentence negates the first one. As a very conservative Christian, I would definitely consider voting for a Mormon. I know a lot of others who would as well.
Glenn beck is the worst thing to happen to the church since Hoffman. The only thing positive he brings is ten percent of two hundred million. I agree with one of the ladies points that most of his audience doesn’t know he is lds and if when those evangelicals find out they will flip their wig.!
Some constructive criticism. The podcast is supposed to be about lds affairs not collective bargaining in wisconson or republican politics in general with no lds theme which took up half the show and the ladies seemed too inclined to talk about. Keep them in line and on lds topics wotherspoon!
Hi William,
Thanks for the note on keeping things more on topic. I had the same basic thought when this conversation ended and I pondered cutting part of it for the reasons you specify. Part of my dilemma with a weekly podcast like this is wondering how long an episode will have “legs.” Is it really a podcast in which each episode should be consumed the week it was released and have just a shortish relevancy span, or should it be more like Mormon Stories where the actual interviews and subject matters will feel more timeless and less tied to the news cycle? I’m guessing the answer is somewhere in the middle.
In this instance, I felt we were more just trying to capture the present moment and I was not worrying too much about longer legs for it. Hence I liked the idea of talking about Wisconsin since we lucked into having someone with us who could tell us things that are a bit harder to catch from news stories. Definitely not LDS related and perhaps took too long to tell (but it’s dang complex there!), and I know some of the rest was more about straight up politics and predicting who might run and do well, etc., rather than about Mormon stuff, but since I was thinking this episode was far more moment specific than some of the others in the series, I felt okay about leaving those parts in.
Don’t know that you’ll agree now that you’ve heard my thinking, but I at least wanted to acknowledge your note and share my sense of things and why we released it as it was.
Thanks, again!
Dan
One more thing. If a Mormon gets the republican nod the election will come down to how much southern evangelicals hate a black man they still swear is muslim vs how much they hate a Mormon. They do hate Mormons pretty good but come on.
The country is going bankrupt because we don’t produce enough food, shelter, and healthcare to keep non-essential workers (most of our workforce) in the style which they have come to regard as their right.
Enjoyed the Podcast, thanks Dan for doing it and the 3-Js for participating. You could form a group and call yourselves DW and the 3Js. 😉
Wish you had guided the discussion to how the prospective Mormon candidates for the US Presidency are influenced by Mormon ideas in general and the Mormon Church specifically and how that effected the issues at hand. The discussion reminded me more of a meeting in some campaign headquarters by a bunch of pollsters. And the snarky comments about Glenn Beck’s religious/political, how did one of the Js phrase it, as “crazy” was amusing coming from a group who for the most part believe that a young New Yorker talked with God, was directed by God via angels and translated an ancient American religious record who had little formal education. It is like the Mad call the Mad Mad and we probably all are when we mix politics and religion. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31390533&l=987116865b&id=1054077525
Besides not addressing the influence of the Church and Mormonism on the potential candidates, it would have been ideal to have addressed how each candidate would have approached the current incursion into Libya and how concepts of Mormonism would help them address that issue. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110328-what-happened-american-declaration-war I wish a Mad libertarian person was on the panel to really balance the political landscape of the discussion.
or as one savvy Mormon-aware Blogger stated:
To paraphrase a TV pundit, unconstitutional misbehavior doesn’t justify more unconstitutional misbehavior. Obama didn’ even follow the the “Wars Power Act” during his latest incursion into Libya. It was passed in 1973 because Johnson got us into Vietnam without Congressional approval. When you think you are above the law and act on it you are an outlaw.
Also, I am not sure what he was thinking. As any Marine or Ex-Marine knows, you can’t win a war from the air alone. He says we we will never have US “boots on the ground” in Libya, and the Secretary of Defense Gates said the same thing to Congress this week, and he was very specific, but then left “plausible denyability” when he said, “as far as I know”. Rumor has it that the CIA have boots on the ground as we speak. Think about your taxes at work when you pay them this month. Sounds like Viet Nam all over again as that is the way it started with Kennedy.
Republicans are just as guilty as Demos in getting the Constitution to “hang by a thread”. If we really are ready to go into any civil war in any nation whose citizens are in jeopardy where are we in regard to the Ivory Coast and a half of dozen other nations who when their citizens are threatened by their despotic leader, we look the other way. Where are the Demos when it comes to denouncing US Imperialism as some of them did during Viet Nam? There are not enough service men/women in all the US services to police the world. We still have US soldiers coming home in body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for what?
Glen
Enjoyed this discussion as well. I thought Huntsman was/had been a general authority?? But that must be a different Huntsman or a Huntsman Sr.? Wasn’t there a Huntsman who allowed President Hinckley to use his private jet?
@Heather:disqus According to mormonwiki.com “[Jon Huntsman Jr.] is the son of billionaire businessman and philanthropist Jon
Huntsman, Sr. of Huntsman Corporation, who is also a general authority
in the Church. His maternal grandfather is Elder
David B. Haight
,
an Apostle.
”
I also wanted to speak to the question in the podcast about why Judaism is different than Mormonism in terms of its factoring into presidential candidates. Judaism seems to be more widely understood or perhaps perceived is a better word, to have different levels of orthodoxy…with mormonism it seems to be all or nothing, at least on the national stage. Mormonism is typically characterized as extremely conservative. I think Islam/Muslims are perceived that way as well. Most of us know or are at least minimally aware of the fact that some people are Jewish and don’t wear the black hat, the prayer shawl, the yamulke, keep strictly kosher, etc.
Judaism is accepted as a culture SEPARATE from it’s religion.
Also, I think a lot of people believe that there is a ‘central’ controlling group within Mormonism (ie., the First Presidency) that makes decisions for all Mormon’s and would control a Mormon president. There isn’t a similar group I am aware of that ‘controls’ Jewish folks.
As a political junkie, and an frequent listener of the podcast, I sadly comment, this is the poorest, and one of the least informed episodes of Mormon Matters.
I suspect part of the reason for Huntsman’s seemingly indirect and unsatisfying answers about his faith stem not just from his lacking a good label to describe his position, but also from an understanding of the media. Suppose he had attempted a full and thorough answer and, at some point in his description said something like ‘ I don’t believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon’ or ‘I have a glass of wine occasionally’ (which is how I hear insiders describe him, although I don’t know how accurate it is) the headlines probably would have been ‘Mormon Huntsman drinks alcohol!’ ‘Huntsman says Book of Mormon is wrong and Joseph Smith is a liar ‘. Basically, they would have taken his comments out of context and made a huge deal out of small points. I mean, heck, even with the little he gave them that happened. So, while I found Huntsman’s answers a bit unsatisfying, I understand and sympathize with his desire for discretion. Not only that, but there is a good chance he is still on an often changing path and even he does not know exactly where his faith lies and giving an answer about his feelings on that day would have cemented himself to a position that might change the next day. And any Utahn who has left the Church knows it can be incredibly thorny to explain the details of their dwindling faith or belief, so he probably, realizing it would likely be more thorny to be detailed than to be somewhat vague (though I still think his answer was honest and straight forward, just not detailed), he very reasonably chose the less thorough answer.