From today’s Tribune:
U.S. Muslims are charging Mitt Romney with hypocrisy for refusing to consider appointing an Islamic believer to his Cabinet if he is elected president.
At a fundraiser earlier this month in Las Vegas, Pakistani financier Mansoor Ijaz asked Romney whether he would “consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his Cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that ‘jihadism’ is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today.”
According to an opinion piece Ijaz wrote in The Christian Science Monitor, Romney replied, ” . . . based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage of] our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”
Now U.S. Muslim leaders have called for a meeting with Romney, and commentators are pointing out out how often Romney claims religious discrimination against him due to his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Did Mitt really say it? The only quotes available come two months after the incident in an op-ed piece. To be fair to Romney, the quote may not be accurate. Anyway, here’s how Mitt spins the controversy:
On CBS on Tuesday, Romney claimed what he actually said was: “No, I don’t think you have to have a Muslim in the Cabinet to be able to take on radical jihad any more than during the World War II we needed a Japanese American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan.”
He told CNN’s “Situation Room” Monday that “to fill spots based on checking off boxes of various ethnic groups is really a very inappropriate way to think about how we staff positions.”
Classic spin: when you give a bad answer, try and change the original question.
The original quetion was whether Romney would consider, not commit to having a Muslim on his cabinent to deal with national security issues. Big difference. Mitt’s I-don’t-want-an-ethnic-check-list answer doesn’t address consideration, but rather a commitment.
It’s totally hypocritical of Mitt not to consider a Muslim, assuming that’s what he really said. It makes him sound like the ill informed so called Christian Iowa bigots and hicks in today’s New York Times that denounce Mormonism.
Oh, and by the way Mitt, Islam is a religion, not an ethnicity.
-Tom
So if a Christian doesn’t agree with Mormon theology, he’s an ill-informed hick bigot? How is that statement any different than the ones you cite from that article?
No, if a Christian doesn’t agree and then excludes a candidate a candidate from consideration because he “doesn’t pray to the God of the Bible”.
That makes them ill informed hick bigots.
Man, leave it to a politician to totally complicate a straight forward question. Why not just answer “Sure, I’d consider any qualified American.” Next question. I wonder sometime if they do this just to get more airtime.
Technically though, these hicks are half right since Mormons believe the God of the Old Testiment (Jehovah) was Jesus. Mormons don’t pray to Jesus they pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus, so Mormons pray to the God of half the Bible right? I just don’t think they have any ground to say Mormons aren’t real Christians.