Yeah, caught my eye too. The article in the Washington Post by Jonathan Capehart was, “I met a black Mormon birther Ron Paul delegate”.
I was watching the Colbert Report and saw the poll result below:
The Republican National Convention delegate who is the subject of this article was not, however, the “margin of error” in the poll above, but a Ron Paul delegate. In 2008 John McCain received only 4% of the black vote. The sea of white faces at the Republican Convention was underscored by a truly shocking incident, reported by the Washington Post, and others:
On Tuesday, convention organizers ejected two attendees after they reportedly threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman and told her, “This is how we feed animals.” Organizers called the conduct “inexcusable and unacceptable.”
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told the Post:
The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.
Being a black Mormon carries its own bit of strangeness. From 1849 to 19783, blacks were excluded from the Mormon priesthood (all worthy Mormon males become members of the priesthood) because the Book of Mormon said that the black color was a mark of a curse from God. (The red color of American Indians was also a punishment according to early Mormons.) The early Mormon leader Brigham Young expressed his views in this graphic language:
You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind …. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same race—that they should be the ‘servant of servants’; and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree.4
Later inerrant divine revelation corrected prior policy (see also: Polygamy), allowing full participation by blacks in the Mormon church. Nowadays, the Latter-day Saints are growing fastest outside its traditional white Anglo-Saxon origins.
So back to Allen Johnson, Republican delegate from Texas. Johnson thinks the Republicans are getting more and more liberal1 and if that weren’t enough, that Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate is a fake.
“Mommy, tell me more about the birther.”
“…Obama was raised a communist. His parents were communists. His grandparents were communists. What do you expect from him?2” I challenged him on that last assertion, which garnered this reply. “Yes, they were CIA.”
Then, without my asking, Johnson volunteered, “Was he born in Kenya? He said he was born in Kenya.” And the long-form birth certificate that President Obama released last year? What did Johnson make of that? “It does not appear to be real. No. I could go on and on. That’s radical enough,” he said with a chuckle as our mind-blowing conversation ended.
Read Mr. Capehart’s article for a much more nuanced and contextual version of the story. Also, check out the Comedy Central link for Colbert’s revealing interview with former presidential candidate and fellow-Mormon Jon Huntsman.
Also, check out this MSNBC interview including Capehart. Apparently Capehart was unable to find any black delegate at the RNC supporting Romney.
1Based on deficit spending.
2Johnson said he voted for Obama in 2008.
3It is interesting to note that the First Presidency of the Latter-day Saints who confirmed the revelation of priesthood for all worthy males to President Kimball in 1978 included one Marion George Romney, born in Mexico, as was Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney.
4This quotation comes from the Journal of Discourses, an early Mormon publication of 26 volumes of the writings and sermons of early Mormon leaders, in which can be found the stranger bits of Mormonism. When dealing with Mormonism it is important to distinguish between “doctrine,” and “speculation.” Mormon apologists will say, and perhaps reasonably so, that the JD is not doctrine.
Wow…what a bizarre fellow…
I couldn’t come up with any comment but “wow” as well, so I wasn’t going to comment.
Out of curiosity, what’s happened to the 6% that’s left over from Obama??
This article has been updated to correct a comment about blacks in the priesthood. Upon further research, it appears that Mormon founder Joseph Smith was an abolitionist, and that in the earliest times, there were black Mormons. That ended in 1849. I gather (don’t quote me) that Brigham Young was responsible for the racist turn in Mormonism that banned blacks from the priesthood until 1978,
I wasn’t able to find a quick answer, but it looks to me like the 6% is “undecided.”
This report is erroneous. In the beginning blacks were ordained to the priesthood and at least three generations of blacks were ordained to the priesthood. Elija Able was ordained by Joseph Smith and even Brigham Young ordained blacks to the priesthood. The Mormons were persecuted in Missuri because they were against slavery and helped slaves escape. Blacks were welcome into the church while Proetestant churches turned away blacks.
I know a lot of blacks who are proud members of the zero percent club. You can’t always believe what the press puts out. Correction, you should never believe what the press puts out until you check the facts yourself.
Perhaps they were purged from voter rolls by Republican dominated states. So, they don’t count.
Thanks for your comment. I wrote that part of the article from memory, and was gathering source material to improve the article when I found I had made a mistake. The fact of the exclusion from the priesthood was true, but I had my dates wrong.
While the first Mormons, as you said, did accept black members and a black member was ordained by Joseph Smith, Blacks were banned from the Mormon priesthood from 1849 – 1978, after which ban was lifted by the “Official Declaration” of President Kimball.
Brigham Young said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Declaration%E2%80%942
I know a lot about Mormonism, but it’s old and sometimes I remember wrong. I will try to be sensitive to the issue of putting out accurate and well-sourced information about Mormons and to refrain from spreading rumors, or relying on old memories. However, I’m not a Mormon apologist either. We do “warts and all” here. Also, this blog really isn’t about Mitt Romney or Mormons.
I don’t know how to check a poll result myself. Do you have a suggestion on how to do what you’re suggesting I do?
To put the best possible spin on the result we could say .4% in the poll supported Romney (rounding to zero) and the poll’s stated margin of error of 3.1% was all good to the Romney side and get a really optimistic best case number of 3.5%. It’s not as flashy as 0%, but still pretty darned small.
Well, in order to check a poll result, you have to have access to at least the underlying data. Many polls will provide links to this, including showing what questions they asked and the order they were asked. Those too are very important to assess, as the phrasing and order of questions can be leading / biased towards maximizing or minimizing a certain response.
Most polls also will provide the size of the sample set (a reliable poll should strive for at least 1000 respondants) and should provide a detailed cross-tab breakdown of the demographics of who they polled.
Some pollsters like to keep portions of their “methodology” secret, but these factors are important too, in order to assess the reliability of the data. A good poll will also list the basis for its MOE (margin of error), any key screening criteria (such as registered voters vs. whatever their personal “likely voter” model is), the method of contact (cell phone, land line, internet, robocall, etc.). What is most often kept secret is their method of going about getting a “random sampling” in the first place and sometimes the “weightings” that are placed on different demographics in the sampling set.
Those that follow polls closely will compare the demographic breakdowns to similar or previous polls, taken over the same geographic region and also compare them to actual post-election historical turnout data, to see if the sample set and weightings make sense.
For example, if a certain region polled had 8% african-american turnout in the last presidential election and other data sets to back up that 8% african-american turnout is the “likely voter” pool for that region this time around as well, then they should both target and weight a sample-set of responses towards having african-american responses represent 8% of their overall results. Others in analyzing those particular poll results, can be critical of the data, if they found it undersampled or oversampled these various demographic groups.
Obviously, it gets a lot more complicated than that, but I wanted to give a simplistic high-level example of what is done, what can be examined and how it matters.
I like Nate Silver’s analysis. I don’t see him discussing this particular poll, But there is this post entitled Seven Ways to Evaluate a Poll.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/aug-23-seven-ways-to-evaluate-a-poll/
The NBC/WSJ poll is a joint effort by a Republican pollster and a Democratic pollster, so it is as free of bias as you can get.
McCain-Palin received 4% of the black vote in 2008, and there is nothing to indicate that Romney-Ryan is going to improve on that.
…y’all get back to Doc the next time the right wing prints anything similar.
I hope nobody thinks this poll means no black voters will go for Romney. Polls typically quote an error of about 3%. This number comes from the number of people contacted — typically about a thousand. The results for black voters would come from looking only at the black voters in the poll, which of course is a much smaller number than the whole poll, and hence will have a much bigger error than 3%. I found this article which has a few more details on the poll — in particular, that the number of black voters in the poll was under 100. So the error on this result would be around 10%, and what the poll really means is that support for Romney among black voters is probably below 10%. And that is a number that would surprise nobody.
Agreed. It should be pointed out that there is nothing unusual or surprising in such figures either. The Democratic Party has simply been a better match for the interests and needs of the overall african american population for the past several decades, while the GOP has become increasingly hostile to them. As a result, their support has consistently gone to the Democratic Party in excess of 90% during that timeframe.
The only question is whether Romney’s results will even underperform McCain’s dismal 4%. Anecdotal evidence so far supports that it will. I certainly expect it to be higher than 0%. Nonetheless, such a likely very low single-digit support result (within almost any pollings MOE) is abysmal, to the point where african american GOP voters can seriously be viewed as mere statistical anomalies.
It appears that the prophet, Brigham Young, was somewhat lacking in critical thinking skills–perhaps, he was an antecedent Republican.
This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same race—….
Hmm…it seems to me that, by that reasoning, Noah, Shem, Japheth, et al were cursed by Cain’s misdeed. Obviously, since they were the only human survivors of the Great Flood.
Or, perhaps, Mrs. Noah was engaging in some hanky-panky with a non-Cainite. (That’s a pun)
And it’s the definition of cynical to first alienate black voters by fostering an essentially racist environment and then claim blacks are racist for voting DP.
This article has been expanded to include more material on racism both in the Republican Party and in early Mormonism.
I wonder what the poll numbers would be if Romney had chosen Candy Rice as his running mate. If the 94% support for Obama is based on identity politics as the republicans claim, then there should be a very low double digit support for the Romney/Rice ticket. Rice is not Alan Keys. She would have siphoned a lot of off of African American votes from Obama.
“Condy”
African Americans have traditionally voted Democratic. Although clearly more blacks voted for Obama than would have voted for the Democratic candidate otherwise, it was more of an intensification of an existing trend than anything. Gore got 95% of the black vote in 2000.
I suspect that a black on the GOP ticket would drive more potential GOP voters to a 3rd party candidate than it would cause black voters to switch from Obama to the GOP.
ObiWanCannoli:
condi is PRO CHOICE, MARRIAGE EQUALITY & AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
NEVER would she be considered in THIS far right gop
mitt had to satisfy the base that he was one of them (after his progressive record in the past)
It’s surprising that there’s even one masochist who would vote for somebody who called them a moocher who just wants free stuff from the government.
It’s too early for Rice to enter the fray. She bears a lot of the responsibility for the Bush administration dropping the ball on terrorism pre-911, the lie that Iraq had WMDs, and the many tactical and strategic mistakes the US made early on in the Iraq invasion. Those were all pretty significant f@ck ups for which Romney bears no responsibility. He certainly doesn’t want to saddle his campaign with the burden of defending Condi’s bad advice and public lies.
I lived in Massachusetts when Romney was governor. I’m a Democrat and I didn’t vote for him then. I won’t vote for him in November, but I don’t particularly dislike him. However, I really, really dislike the lying liars who ran the government in the early 00s. I think Condi would drive away far more voters than she would attract.
From The Washington Post article (referenced by Doc C. in his piece):
Is it ignorance of the English language or a sign of how deep racism is that the author of the article refers repeatedly to “xenophobia”? Xenophobia is fear of foreigners. Black Americans are not foreigners, they are as American as white folk.
And again, from The Washington Post:
Two points: firstly, it seems to me that fear is a defining characteristic of the modern US psyche: fear of strangers, fear of the unknown. In no other first world country do so many people feel the need to carry guns to protect themselves against the dangers they imagine around the corner. Even fear of “Obamacare” – how can one be afraid of something like that? (Disapprove of it, yes, fear it, no.)
Secondly, it is not the whites who need fear the blacks. History shows that it is exactly the other way around, it is the whites who oppress non-whites. Would a black cop in the south ask a white man “show us your papers boy?” and get away with it?
The Republicans pander to that fearful nature. In my view, there are only three groups who support them: (1) extremely rich folk who want to keep all their wealth and power untrammelled by social responsibilities, (2) social bullies who wanting to inflict their “morals” – ha! – onto everybody else, and (3) morons. Romney has group 1 and probably most of group 2, he needs the numerous votes of group 3.
So how to get the votes? By following the classic political strategy: make enough populist noises to persuade the voters that your party will behave decently, get into power then follow the policies you really believe in.
Republican policies only favor the rich and promote general misery to the benefit of a select few. Economically absurd, socially divisive, morally repugnant, in short, monstrous.
Agreed. The Republican convention was pretty much devoid of discussion of foreign policy and the war in Afghanistan wasn’t mentioned once. Rice’s speech at the convention didn’t include the words “Afghanistan,” “Al-Qaeda” or “Taliban.” She made just two passing references to Iran and one comment about “the fragile democracy of Iraq.”
Rice will always be associated with the failure to heed the warnings prior to 9/11 and her infamous warning about a “mushroom cloud” to justify the disastrous war in Iraq. The Republicans would like us to forget that prior to becoming Secretary of State she was Bush’s National Security Advisor.
Agreed. Unfortunately, the GOP does “token” politics, instead of adjusting its policies, attitudes and positions to actually benefit various minority groups.
Therefore, the “token” becomes nothing more than a hollow and hypocritical symbol of the overall problem. Most of the intented audience are able to quickly see through such “token” attempts. It usually results in even stronger anger and rejection of that party, instead of garnishing much support. Plus, as mentioned, when the GOP’s own platform is inherently hostile and often bigoted against that minority and its needs, it tends to also have a “negative effect” on that very base…turning off certain bigoted members from supporting the GOP, because they cannot accept even the “token”…
One other important point to stress here on the specific example of Condi Rice – she has repeatedly made it clear that she does NOT want to hold another political office and that she has learned that she is “not cut out” for that. She will help her party, but she will intentionally remain in the private sector. Fantasies of her being on this or any future presidential ticket are just that – pure fantasy.
Agreed. A good simple breakdown.
Here is one important point where I take some issue, in regards to Romney. From how he has campaigned over the past 7 years, there is NO clear sense of what he actually stands for, except desperately wanting to have “President” on his resume. He is the most shameless pandering “say anything” candidate I’ve ever seen in my life. I have yet to see anything that gives me a sense of any actual “core” position that he’s willing to stand up for and defend.
No, to all the folks who think he’ll simply revert to governing as some sort of reasonable “moderate”, should he get office, I say you are just deluding yourselves.
Those who lack any set of principles and core conviction and only have ambition, become nothing more than hollow puppets, to those that control the purse strings and their ability to stay in office and be re-elected.
Romney is most likely to just follow whatever policy positions his backers and his “base” push on him. When you look at the people he’s gathered so far to finance his campaign and help develop his “platform”, they are economically retreads from the GWB administration and severe neo-con chicken-hawks pounding the drums for war on the foreign policy end. On the social issues side, he’ll have to continue to pander to the “base” to retain their sceptical support. His tax positions are those of the selfish, sociopath plutocrats, Koch Brothers and Grover Norquist. THOSE are the folks who will be dictating policy in any Romney Administration…
…So be afraid…be very, very afraid…
While I found most of Rice’s speech to be well-done and professorial, there were elements that came across as glaringly neo-con in her words.
Further, several of the other speeches – McCain’s and Romney’s in particular, were very troubling on the foreign policy front – fairly loudly banging the drums for starting a war against Iran.
Romney’s speech went even further into bad diplomacy. He displayed surprisingly bold hostility towards Russia and China… as if he wants to reignite a new Cold War as well. While many can attribute that bluster to Bolton and the other neo-cons on Romney’s team, they should take those attitudes as a seriously chilling preview of where Romney’s foreign policy will seriously go, as this speech was NOT the first time that Romney has made such reckless statements at all.
Sadly, such warmongering jingoism is the one area that he’s been fairly consistent in his language over the past year…
…Which is why the most tragically ironic part of Clint Eastwood’s bizarre rant may have been his criticism of Obama not having pulled our troops out of Afghanistan already. Does Clint even have a clue that the Romney foreign policy position on Afghanistan pretty much mirror’s McCain’s – in which the US military remains in Afghanistan for decades…
A certain VP choice from 2008 comes to mind. “Hey, she’s got the same plumbing as Hillary! We’ll clean up with all them PUMAs!”
Dr. Condoleezza Rice:
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-01-10/us/wbr.smoking.gun_1_smoking-gun-nuclear-weapons-hans-blix?_s=PM:US
“We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon,” she told me. “And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought — maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.”
“The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Yep!!!
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,195444,196002 –
Ezra Benson, Eisenhower’s Ag secretary: ‘The so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is a Communist program for revolution in America.’
Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith told “Look” magazine’s editor: ‘Darkies are wonderful people, and they have their place.’
Jews for Romney is a worse idea than Jews for Jesus.
and Ryan won’t?
I mean they’re already promoting the ‘team’ as if Ryan is the top of the ticket! And every second sentence he says is a lie.
Eastwood also criticized the notion of lawyers becoming President. Apparently he didn’t get the memo that Romney has a law degree from Harvard
Ryan helps with enthusiasm and turnout among teabaggers. Romney chose to do this even though it drives the ticket farther to the right, away from moderates and independents. I think Rice would turn off both the teabaggers–because she is not in-step with them on culture war issues–and drive away moderates and independents, who remember her as a lying war-mongerer. I think she has a future in politics if she wants one, but it won’t be until our collective memory of the foreign policy disasters of 2001-2004 (or so) has faded sufficiently so that she can fool people into thinking that these failures were either unimportant or were actually successes, or that she had nothing to do with them. JMHO.
Not only this, but effectively he’s been a better lawyer than businessman.
The law told him what he could and couldn’t do in a business that was basically predatory.
Most businesses produce goods or services.
Romney looked at businesses as an asset or liability on a balance sheet.
“You didn’t build that” is one of the best descriptions of Romney’s business interests.
Further Clint also doesn’t know that many of our presidents have been lawyers. In fact out of all the men who have held a position as President or VP about 57% have been lawyers.
Yeah, the levels of irony and cognitive dissonance there…
She doesn’t want one. There are very few former administration officials that have made that position clearer than her and Colin Powell.
Neither of them has any desire to go back, after their GWB administration experiences…
Dr Kenneth Noisewater :
and i guess he doesn’t know that businessmen make the worst presidents
Sorry Mitt Romney, Good Businessmen Rarely Make Good Presidents
Businessmen like Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, and the Bushes went on to be some of the worst presidents
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/02/17/sorry-mitt-romney-good-businessmen-rarely-make-good-presidents
One Abraham Lincoln comes to mind.
No she wouldn’t! I would not vote for a conservative and her being black would not make me ignor her politics and vote for her. I don’t understand why white people think that black people vote for anyone cause he’s black. I’d vote for Condi if she switched parties and embraced my liberal politics….not before.
Exactly!!!!