Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Romney

One would think that Mitt Romney, as a Mormon, would be committed to the idea of religous tolerance, considering that most Christian fundamentalists consider Mormonism to be nothing more than a bizarre cult. Indeed, Romney has said on several occasions that he considers religious discrimination to be "un-American."

But it seems as if Romney hasn't been entirely truthful about his commitment to religious tolerance. Recently, when questioned in Las Vegas about whether he would "consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters", he replied, "...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in 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."

Never mind that the Muslim percentage of the US population is quite similar to that of the Mormon percentage -- I'm sure he'd not discriminate against his own. Jews are also a small percentage of the US population, but even Romney isn't stupid enough to suggest discrimination here based on population percentages.

To use population percentages as a basis for choosing cabinet members is nothing but a quota system, something that Romney spoke out against when asked about appointing African-Americans to his cabinet: "... suggesting that we have 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.

I'm very pleased that, among my Cabinet members, for instance, I had several African-American individuals. I had people of different backgrounds. But I don't go in every circumstance I'm in and say, OK, how many African-Americans, how many Hispanic-Americans, how many Asian-Americans, and fill boxes that way."

It's quite obvious that Romney is simply pandering to the Christian fundamentalist wing of the Republican party in order to gain more votes. Never mind that they consider him, as a Mormon, to merely be a lesser evil than the fundamentalist radical wing of the Islamic religion.

In any instance, Romney's a hypocrite of the first order.