Posted on 07/23/2012 9:33:15 AM PDT by greyfoxx39
Next year could be a banner one for Mormons in the nation’s capital, with their numbers and influence likely to grow whether or not Mitt Romney is elected president.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) could raise the number of Mormons in the upper chamber to seven, should he and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) win in November.
Depending on who controls the Senate, it will have either have a Mormon Senate majority leader in Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or a Mormon president pro tempore and Finance Committee Chairman in Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
“I wouldn’t be surprised, especially in a Republican administration, to see members of my faith well represented,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a rising Tea Party star who is Mormon, told The Hill.
“I don’t think that Mormons will be necessarily any more or any less represented in a Romney administration than they would in others…. But sometimes people tend to hire other people that they know, that they’ve worked with in the past.”
There are currently 14 Mormons in Congress: Sens. Reid, Hatch, Heller, Lee, Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and Reps. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), Wally Herger (R-Calif.), Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).
Those numbers are likely to grow some in the fall.
Flake, who traveled with Romney during the Iowa caucuses, is the frontrunner in both his primary and general election, though another Mormon, businessman Wil Cardon (R), is giving him headaches in the primary. Heller is locked in a tight race with Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.).
Flake’s old House seat will be filled by a Mormon, either former Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) or former Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams (R). Chris Stewart, a Mormon Republican, is considered a lock for a newly-created House seat in Utah. Mia Love, the African-American mayor of a small Utah town and a highly touted recruit running against Matheson, is also Mormon.
On top of that, if Romney wins the presidency there are a number of Mormon Republicans who are in line to gain political power.
Chief among them is former Utah governor and Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt (R), a close Romney ally who has been tapped to head Romney’s transition team. He has been mentioned as a possible White House chief of staff.
A number of prominent Mormons have been major Romney donors — the types of people who often wind up getting offered ambassadorships.
These include Bill Marriott, a longtime family friend of Romney’s, and Kevin Rollins, a former partner of Romney’s at Bain & Company. JetBlue founder David Neeleman and Credit Suisse banking division CEO Eric Varvel, both Mormons, are on Romney’s finance team.
“A lot of these folks are very dear friends of his — they’ve known each other for decades now,” Hatch said. “I know every one of them and I don’t know of one of them that wants anything from their donations.”
But Hatch, who was an early Romney backer in 2008 and received Romney’s support in his contested Senate primary this year, said there was a natural tendency for anyone to bring along people they know and trust.
“Let’s face it, you do tend to want to bring some people with you that you know very well, that’s just a natural thing. I don’t care who it is, people all feel the same way,” Sen. Hatch said.
“Should Romney win and bring some of his people into the government, there will be a lot of people who are devout Mormons in positions of power,” said Paul Hatch, a longtime Republican strategist who grew up Mormon in Utah.
“As far as ambassadorships, Romney really does have a very strong donor base among Mormons that he’s cultivated since he ran in 1994 against Ted Kennedy for Senate.”
President Obama has appointed Mormons to serve in his administration, including former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (R), who served as his ambassador to China. He also tapped Larry Echo Hawk, a former assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Sen. Mike Lee noted that President Reagan named a number of Mormons to top positions, including Lee’s father, Rex, who was Reagan’s first solicitor general.
“While he was there he happened to hire one or two people who happened to be members of the Mormon faith, but that was not a conscious decision of ‘I’ve got to get more Mormons here,’ ” he said.
One of them was Terry Crapo, the brother of Sen. Crapo, who Rex Lee picked to be his deputy but died of leukemia before he could take the job.
“They had gone to [Brigham Young University] together,” Sen. Lee said. “It wasn’t about Mormonism — he was just one of the people he knew, an exceptionally bright lawyer.”
Paul Hatch, who ran Leavitt’s gubernatorial campaign and is now a consultant for Love’s campaign, said that devout Mormons tended to spend more time involved in church activities than those in other religions. He cited the church’s policy of having lay clergymen rather than full-time ministers as a reason.
“For a lot of people the Mormon Church becomes the center of their life. It’s more than going to Temple on Saturday or Mass on Sunday for an hour. People’s social circles are centered on their religious experience, particularly in Utah,” Paul Hatch said.
While Romney had a highly active life outside the church, he had also been heavily involved in its operations in Massachusetts, he added.
“Mormons are often who Mormons know — that’s who they’ve worked with, who they’ve built trust with, and the natural result is they’d bring in some of those people as staffers and assistants.”
You are an jackass..
Oh my God - that is brilliant! Finally an intelligent graphic for this campaign; not like the graphics spewed endlessly by the idiots who make their decisions in a two-man race based on the similarities of the two men (understanding the term “men” here is being used pretty damn liberally (punny!)).
“What the world calls ‘Mormonism’ will rule every nation...God has decreed it, and his own right arm will accomplish it. This will make the heathen rage.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, p. 53)
Is that right?
OK, what say you about the following:
The Journal of Discourses (often abbreviated J.D.) is a 26-volume collection of public sermons by early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The first editions of the Journal were published in England by George D. Watt, the stenographer of Brigham Young. Publication began in 1854, with the endorsement of the church's First Presidency, and ended in 1886. The Journal is one of the richest sources of early Mormon theology and thinking. It includes 1,438 sermons given by 55 church leaders, including most numerously Brigham Young, John Taylor, Orson Pratt, Heber C. Kimball, and George Q. Cannon.
Reservations about the Journal can be found in official LDS publications as early as 1978. Following is the CURRENT, OFFICIAL, POSITION of the church on the issue:
Gee, I guess its back to the drawing board right?
Better luck (and better EXAMPLES) next time!
Jesus is “anti-Mormon” as well, since He is “pro-truth.”
Some Mormons make OK politicians. But the truth remains that Mormonism was conceived by Satan and spread by a huckster.
So now those who are in favor of promoting truth are “lunatic bigots”?
You’d call Jesus Christ a “lunatic bigot” because He is similarly pro-truth and anti-heresy?
The truly twisted call the truth-tellers “sick” and “twisted.”
Ohnoes, you sweared. I’m telling your Bishop.
Explain this, if you can. Mormons killed many more than they lost.
I am a descendent of a Mormon killer.
Yep, my ancestor was a Mormon who killed over 120 people.
How crazy do you have to be to think that an Obama victory is better than a Romney victory? With Romney, we live to fight another day - with Obama - we just die, THERE WILL BE NO TOMORROW. I grieve to think there are some conservatives (tiny minority that they are) that are planning to not vote for president or to vote for someone that cannot possibly win. We CANNOT withstand four more years of Barack Hussein Obama.
GOD will turn his back on us - possibly forever - if we let Obama win again.
Thank you Sister.
I can use all the support I can get as at times I feel like Rodney Dangerfield: "No respect!" lol.
I have to laugh at those who keep advancing as fact that Mormons are NOT "Christians" and though I'm not certain if that is so....(as a Catholic I admit not knowing enough about that religion) but I do know (probably as much as ANY Freeper here) about the "Religion of Pieces" and how dangerous it is to our Safety and Survival....and as yet, NONE who hate Mitt or Mormons can produce anything which shows (TODAY and NOT 150+ years ago) that Mormons or Mormonism is in any way a threat to our Republic as is Islam/Sharia.
And considering Dear Leader appears to have embraced and welcomed those practitioners thereof into his Administration and appears to be willing to allow Sharia to replace our Constitution.....SCARES the hell out of me.
Much as the same as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism. Taoism and Confucianism, do not worry me as does Mormonism, that of ISLAMISM (which is more pernicious, eeevil, and dangerous than all the "isms" we have faced in the past...Communism, Fascist, Nazism....COMBINED) should concern ANYONE who considers themselves a "Conservative" and "Patriot."
A Polish Jew who is a friend of mine got to make that choice as a young man. He chose Stalin, or perhaps Stalin was chosen for him ... largely through geography. He lived then in far eastern Poland in the Russian Zoneof conquest, gained when Russia was a NAZI ally.
He was taken into a Soviet Labor Battalion and spent the war as a railroad worker, treated very harsh and cruel treatment, suffering much brutal privation. But he, and a million like him, lived! So you're right, no question of choice. Go for life.
As far as the Mormons go, we have no choice either. We take the Mormon. Whatever their strange cult is ... and it is strange ... it is American. Besides, if they get out of hand, I know we can count on the Vatican sending the Swiss Guard to rescue us.
Bigot
So a "prophet" of god got it wrong in 1867 when he made that statement?
Thanks for admitting that the majority, if not all of your comments directed at those you claim are "haters", are borne out of ignorance.
If its a “tiny minority”, why all the huffing and puffing about it?
I've got your back. You are a true patriot. Thank you for your service to our country. :-)
Good luck with that. Making a wild claim and running is the LDS SOP...
Well, what you call my "huffing and puffing" is actually a part of my vow to GOD - that I will do everything in my power to keep Barack Obama (who I think is the greatest threat to the United States of America that has ever been elected to office) - to keep Obama from being re-elected.
If I can just convince one person to re-evaluate their position on this, then it is a worthwhile attempt to keep the last, great bastion of freedom from being taken down by a bony-assed Marxist Imposter that calls himself Obama.
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