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Who Says Romney Has No Campaign Narrative?

Forget innovation and transformation.  Here it is: “My kids and grandkids this! My kids and grandkids that!  Did I mention that I have a lot of kids and grandkids?”  He manages to refer to his “kids and grandkids” five times in the space of one answer.  I smell a focus-group-tested phrase. Romney tackles the religion […]

Forget innovation and transformation.  Here it is: “My kids and grandkids this! My kids and grandkids that!  Did I mention that I have a lot of kids and grandkids?”  He manages to refer to his “kids and grandkids” five times in the space of one answer.  I smell a focus-group-tested phrase.

Romney tackles the religion issue head-on by becoming extremely vague and mushy:

Well, I think religion is a separate sphere in terms of a particular brand of faith, but I think the principles of all faiths have [bold mine-DL], as their foundation, the idea that there is a supreme being, that this supreme being is a heavenly father, and that all the people in our country and in all countries are sons and daughters of the same supreme being.

Insh’allah.  Forget ecumenical jihad–Romney offers a more conventional ecumenical niceness.  Notice that little bit of rhetorical jujitsu he has pulled off here?  “[R]eligion is a separate sphere in terms of a particular brand of faith,” he said, which means that he seems to be claiming quite literally that his “brand” of faith has nothing to do with his politics.  He could just as easily be a Sikh and have the same “principles.”  Which is a nice way of saying that his particular religion has nothing unique or meaningful to tell him that cannot be found in the lowest common denominator of all religion, which seems to be not much more than the Golden Rule.  This is how he is going to avoid talking about Mormonism–he will declare it a “particular brand” that has nothing to do with the political sphere, which effectively says that his Mormonism ought to be off limits.  Thus will he attempt to walk the non-existent tight rope between his old moderate self in which no one imposes his beliefs on others and a religious conservatism where the conservatives rather assume that there will be a fair amount of imposing going on.  Apparently the only thing that informs his politics is a vague theism and a sense of the unity of mankind.  It seems to me that this would put off even more evangelicals than his Mormonism alone ever could.

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