Mitt Romney faces competition for Nevada’s Mormon vote

The outcome of tomorrow’s Republican caucus in Nevada is likely to be decided by a spectacular turnout from local Mormons, who make up around 7 percent of residents but (as I reported this morning) are expected to cast 30 percent of votes.

Received wisdom has it that nine out of ten of them will back Mitt Romney, a fellow member of the Church who was educated in neighbouring Utah. That, after all, is what happened back in 2008, when Romney won Nevada with 51 percent support.

But he faces at least some competition for the Mormon vote. The libertarian candidate Ron Paul (pictured), who came second in 2008, is actively courting the LDS community. He has two Facebook pages supporting those efforts: “Latter Day Saints for Ron Paul” and “Mormons for Ron Paul 2012.”

According to Connor Boyack, a Mormon and author of Latter Day Liberty, a book advocating libertarianism and Ron Paul through the framework of LDS values, Paul’s pitch to the Mormon community is partly based on his preoccupation with a literalist interpretation of the US constitution.

“Part of our faith implies support for the constitution. We believe it was a document inspired by God,” he tells me. “In fact, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, ran for President on an independent platform, out of frustration with the federal government failing to enforce the constitution. The parallels with Ron Paul are striking.”

Boyack adds that many Mormons are naturally drawn to Paul’s isolationist foreign policy. “Our scriptures are very anti-war. One passage lays out a set of policies to renounce war and proclaim peace. Ron Paul is the only one doing that.”

Today’s Las Vegas Review Journal has an interesting piece on Paul’s pitch to local Mormons (here), which is well worth a look.

One factor it ignores, but which will perhaps also play into proceedings, is Mitt Romney’s failure to publicly take ownership of his Mormonism on the campaign trail so far. Though it provides him with an advantage in Western states, where a disproportionate number of LDS members live, the faith is a barrier to success among Christian evangelicals, who regard it as a cult. It can also be a turn-off for independent voters wary of its eccentric theology and customs (including the now-defunct tradition of polygamy). Like all Mormons, Romney wears divine underwear, for example, and as a former bishop in the church has taken part in the controversial practice of “baptising” dead members of other faiths, including his own athiest father-in-law.

“The strange thing,” says Boyack, “is that the Mormon guy doesn’t want to reach out to his own people, but Ron Paul, the Baptist guy, does.”

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• JoeySouth

  From the polls it looks like most of the Mormons are turning a deaf ear to Ron Paul. Like most other religious groups they just close their ears (and hold ther nose) and stick together for Romney. They make the evangelicals and even the baptists in the south look open minded.

• http://twitter.com/eltiare Jeremy Nicoll

  I don’t steal from nor beat up my neighbors… I must be an isolationist.

• Jackson Baer

  I’m a big Ron Paul guy but it’s a little disheartening to see him polling so low after flirting with victory early on. To me it’s simply the Republican party that is holding him down and yet promoting his message at the same time. I really hope he runs 3rd party after Mitt buys the nomination. RON PAUL 2012

  http://www.whatthehellbook.com/the-book/

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=262l6tbHSlU

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  Guy, one day the north, south, centre, speaker is out , the leftists win the rightisit , the whistle blowers make lot od dean. Tell me where doea a simple man like me, I do, execept say, Look mate keep the state in godd manner , collect tax and pay tax, then we are talking or like Al-Gore who wenht told about the global warming and who heard? Now we have the 2 dialema, water rising , emploment going up , less tax will be collected, more will steal from the state they alsways do, get the red card go to India. ·         NOT GOOD ENOUGH! These IDIOTS IN CONGRESS have been doing anything they want for years. They are not HELD TO THE SAME STANDARDS that the people they represent are! CONGRESS is the reason this COUNTRY IS LOOSING ITS COMPETITIVE EDGE and has LOST PRESTIGE. CONGRESS IS TO BLAME FOR THIS COUNTRY getting ripped of by just about every country in the entire world.With wars on, you have hundreds who have/had an injuries live half or die. Looking only at few gives a much distorted picture. The fact is that it’s very difficult to get there. Much more difficult than to find and keep a 9-5 job. It’s unfair that people get rich from government bailouts (and they do) and lobbying. That is really the government’s fault (and the people who elect them). Most rich people worked very hard to get there and created employment for thousands of others in the way. For every Bernie Madoff there are ten Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Dave Packards. They not only paid their fair share of taxes, created employment and wealth for others but also donated huge amounts to charity. We were then very fortunate to have a leader of the caliber of Winston Churchill, whose determination to resist, ultimately brought about the downfall of many weaker states, and prevented the total collapse of Western civilization. I salute them.  I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

• wikikettle

  Guy Adams plays the same tune as all the other established state media outlets;
  One note is that Ron Paul is an ‘isolationist’…ie because he is not an interventionist..No Ron Paul is not an isolationist. He just believes that the US Government should not take tax dollars from Americans and give them to the rich in other countries. I am pleastentl surprised there is a picture of Ron Paul and even a mention of him. The American media will go through the classic process of ignoring him, then ridiculing him and then attack him. When the actual policies and lessons from history are actually debated, he comes out on top. American ellections are all about money and special interest lobby. However facts that the media wont tell you..Ron Paul collected more money in one day than any other candidate in history, he collected more money from sevice personal in the military than all the others put together and worst of all his policies are getting out to the people..heaven forbid..expect the attack adds soon..

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZIMSCZ6KL3YN4KZE7R3QAGBJVA timeisaloop

  Guy, being a journalist one would expect that you have a good – or better than average – grasp of the language you are writing in. Unfortunately, not many readers seem capable of separating propaganda from reality, and therefore your use of certain words doesn’t ring alarm bells in their heads, as they should.
  “Boyack adds that many Mormons are naturally drawn to Paul’s ISOLATIONIST foreign policy.” (emphasis added)
  Dr. Ron Paul’s foreign policy is anything but isolationist, if you had bothered to look it up in a dictionary;
  Isolationism is a foreign policy which combines a
  non-interventionist military policy and a political policy of economic
  nationalism (protectionism). In other words, it asserts both of the
  following:

  Non-interventionism – Political rulers should avoid entangling alliances with other nations and avoid all wars not related to direct territorial self-defense.
  Protectionism – There should be legal barriers to control trade and cultural exchange with people in other states.

  Isolationism is not to be confused with the non-interventionist philosophy and foreign policy of the libertarian
  world view, which espouses unrestricted free trade and freedom of
  travel for individuals to all countries. This “libertarian isolationist”
  view is best defined as a policy of nonparticipation in foreign
  political relations, but free trade and affability to all people.
  For as long as Dr. Paul has been in politics he has been a libertarian, not an isolationist, so please stop feeding the public with lies, no matter how trivial they may seem to you.
  I doubt very much my comments will ever be read by you, or change the way you portray people you are told to depict as dangerous, but I feel that it is my duty to the rest of the readers to point out the discrepancies in your text, that drive one towards a certain interpretation.

  Regards.

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  Election Sarah Palin hates Obama as she is now in FOX news, election rigging all over the world, the printers must be making tons of cash from printing these papers I guess. We have seen so many wars, many nukes that these days the blogs are on wars only. I wonder what our future generation will be like what. Add to the TV and the games, they will be Rambo. Far more plausible is that, in seeking nuclear weapons, the Iranians intend to forever alter the balance of power in the Middle East, creating for them an insurance policy of the kind enjoyed by Pakistan, North Korea, India and others. Given the doctrine of pre-emption initiated by the George W. Bush administration in 2003, such a desire is logical. North Korea, charter member of Bush’s axis of evil, went nuclear and was not invaded. Saddam Hussein had no WMD and was deposed and hung. Gadhafi gave up his WMD and was deposed and shot. Neither Pakistan nor North Korea can be said to be stable, clearly. Would either country deploy a nuke, knowing the retaliation that would follow? And why would Iran be any different? I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA No Wonder even I write on this. Very popular.
   

• John Brian Esmade

  I guess this is just another way of creating noise on the upcoming elections,whoever the Mormons vote would that is not our problem anymore. We have all the freedom to choose the right candidate that we think would serve us well and will be there for the country’s development. Well at least he’s not being issued regarding the Mormon Underwear he is using.