Rudy, Mitt: Get With It!

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Sidewalks with Tom Deignan

Rudy, Mitt: Get With It!

December 6, 2007

by Tom Deignan

THIS Thursday, presidential wannabe Mitt Romney is expected to give a major speech in an attempt to confront the issue of religion.

Romney, of course, is a Mormon, and some (particularly the conservative Christian Republicans whose votes Romney wants in upcoming primaries) are skeptical of this religion.

Even before the speech, commentators were dubbing this Romney’s “JFK speech.” This is a reference to the 1960 presidential campaign, when John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism, and his ability to run the country as a Catholic, was openly questioned.

Romney is even giving the speech in Texas, the same southern, heavily Protestant state in which JFK made his speech.

This has kicked off a discussion about religion and politics, one which should be all too familiar to Irish Americans. Accusing one of Romney’s foes, Mike Huckabee, of allowing the Mormon question to fester, Daily News columnist Richard Cohen said Huckabee ignored “a perfect opportunity…to make some ringing statement in support of religious tolerance.”

“He might have made some reference to the ugly anti-Catholic campaigns run against Al Smith (1928) and John F. Kennedy (1960) and how they had both been spearheaded by prominent Protestant clergy, Methodist Bishop Adna Leonard in the former’s case, the renowned Norman Vincent Peale in the latter’s. (Peale later went on to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.)”

Regarding this Thurs-day’s much-anticipated speech, Romney spokes-man Kevin Madden (incidentally, he is a son of Irish immigrants from Yonkers) said, “This speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor’s own faith would inform his Presidency if he were elected.”

That’s all well and good. But if the Romney camp is going to play the tolerance card, they need to think about another issue in the campaign.

In fact, running as a Catholic in a nation still largely Protestant, Rudy Giuliani might also think about the same issue. That issue is immigration.

The Republican Party is in a very precarious state right now regarding immigration. But “tolerance” is not a word that comes to mind when you think of the Republicans vying for the presidential nod, including Romney, Giuliani and blatant nativist Tom Tancredo, who at least has been anti-immigrant his entire political life.

Giuliani, on the other hand, has evolved from a person who once understood the importance of immigration to one who is increasingly willing to play to the Tancredo voters who want to seal up the borders.

But if Romney is going to make religious tolerance a central theme in his campaign, he might want to stop mocking Giuliani and other municipal leaders who may or may not have turned their cities into “sanctuary cities” by allowing immigrants to settle there.

What’s up, Mitt? Is “sanctuary” –- providing comfort and assistance -– some kind of sin in The Book of Mormon? Would Romney have preferred “persecutorial cities”?

If he is going to try to assume the mantle of Al Smith and Kennedy, Romney better break out a history book or two and see what those Irish pols had to say about immigration.

Smith, in particular, is an interesting case in this day and age. No one would ever accuse the former Tammany loyalist and New York governor of being a philosopher.

He always claimed he earned an FFM degree -– from the Fulton Fish Market, that is, where he worked 60 hours a week after his father died when Smith was is his early teens. But Smith was indeed a model of tolerance.

In a CNN/YouTube debate last week, Romney went out of his way to attack Huckabee for supporting a program which assisted prospective college students –- even if their parents were illegal immigrants.

If you oppose such a program, that’s fine. But if you are going to make tolerance a theme in your campaign, if you are hoping to be seen as a trailblazer along the lines of Al Smith and JFK, well, that’s trouble.

Romney wants to appeal to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature,” when it comes to faith, but angels of a decidedly more bitter nature when it comes to immigration.

(Contact Tom at tomdeignan@verizon.net)

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