Pastor Dan at Street Prophets:
Or, if you're like me and you hate flash, read the boring Miami Herald report:
[Romney] showed poise when a heckler attacked him for being a Mormon: "You, sir, you are a pretender. You do not know the Lord.''
The audience booed the heckler.
''One of the great things about this land is that we have people of different faiths and different religions, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country,'' he said, as the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Atrios rightly points out that there's a double-standard here. If someone made the statement, "I think we need a Protestant to lead the country," Catholics would (rightly) be up in arms. And if someone said, "I think we need an atheist to lead the country," well, I swannee: it'd be a regular riot. Yet apparently we can just shrug off the opposite case.
I'll leave it to legal scholars to dope out out the ramifications of a candidate apparently disregarding the constitutional requirement that there be "no religious test" for office. I think Romney's just stating an opinion, but what do I know?
Atheists have a legitimate beef with this kind of talk. It only serves to underscore how they are pushed to the margins of political discourse, if not excluded outright.
Says John McCain:
SPARTANBURG, S.C. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party's conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.
"I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned," the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.
McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench."
As long as the route to the Republican nomination passes through a bidding war for the endorsement of the Religious Right, this is the dynamic we're going to see.
