If Mitt can not keep the oath he took to the momon church .. err god, then how can we expect him he be trusted to keep the Oath of the President??
I wonder if the real reason many TBMs want to see Romney elected is that maybe it will legitimize themselves being members of a religion often perceived as a tad wacky.. In otherwords they are just dying to be considered normal.
by the way.. I am not bitter but am an EX..
Oh man, this is really, really rich. This is what mindless, blind hatred can do to otherwise normal, intelligent people. The Devil is indeed, a harsh taskmaster.
The point all of us "TBMs" here have been trying to make all along, and which the quote used above verifies, is that there is nothing whatsoever in the oaths taken in the Temple that are incongruent with supporting and defending the constitution as a President, senator, or any other kind of public servant.
There is nothing in consecrating ones time, talent's and personal abilities to Zion that connot be easily reconciled with the office and duties of the presidency of the United States. Indeed, the very limited responsibilities actually given to the government, and the basic unalianable rights the protection of which are the core function of government, are so general and delimited in scope that it would be difficult for a faithful Mormon President to find any inconsistencies between the oaths of the Temple and his service as President if he wanted to.
Now, when one begins inserting one's own ideological wish list of changes to American culture, institutions, mores, norms, and economic life that many would like to see enacted, and clutters American political and cultural life with all manner of chaff, the situtation changes. Then, a conservative Mormon President, as he vetoes legislation or disciplines a rogue Supreme Court, comes under assault because it is perceived that his religious principles are animating his politics. And one would be right. However, there is:
1. Nothing wrong with this in either a constitutional or moral sense whatever.
2. Nothing in the Temple oaths has any bearing on fundamental constitutional principles, as the constitution itself has very little bearing on
probably 80% of what modern American government does, and what many Americans would like that government to do.
For the constitution and the Temple oaths to collide, there would have to be an intersection for them to meet; there would have to be a contratiction between dedicating all one's time, talents, and skills to Zion, and serving four or eight years as President in support of a constitution, almost the entire text of which is a protection of the people from government and severe limitations upon the same. I am at a loss to understand how supporting Zion (the pure in heart; morality, ethics, respect for the free will of others, chastity, humility, personal integrity, all attributes one would think politicians, of all people, should strive to have) and supporting and defending the constitution (a document that severely limits what the state can do and involve itself in relative to the lives of American citizens and which features a bill of rights further restricting government interference in economic, social, and political life (including a first amendment that prohibits govenment from making "any laws" regarding a number or fundamental social and poltical rights that have in the last half of the last century become a frothing battleground abounding in laws, rules, and regulations coming from various branches of government)), which, whatever else it is, is not a document to which Americans were ever intended to swear loyalty to over all else.
It is a legal document whose primary purpose is to protect the unalienable rights of the people from the state itself, as well as from the tyranny of both the majority and minority. What liberals really fear about Romney is support for the overturning or truncation of various sacred cows that have no constitutional basis in the first place but which are ideologically beloved. Romney could dismantle vast areas of the modern federal govenment without in the slightest way coming into conflict with the constitution, whether or not such action was animated by religious or purely (say, Libertarian) principles.
This is, as we see repeatedly, a purly manufactured argument that has no real intellectua content.