Questions for the Mittster at the Next Presidential Debate

Questions for Romney next time:

1) Governor, you keep mentioning your 25 years in the private sector as a positive credential. But is it not a fact that you repeatedly sought a career in politics long ago and your time in the public sector, and your not being just another career politician, was only due to your failure, except in your 4 years as Governor of Massachusetts (which you did not run for a second term as due only to your below 30% favorable ratings) to get elected to public office?

2) Governor, you talk about your ability to reach across the political aisle and gaps in ideology and cite your governorship in Massachusetts. But is it not true that during your one term, you exercised 800 vetoes, 709 of which were overridden by the legistlature and in the last year of your governorship, you were absent from the state for 261 days?

3) Governor, you make repeated references to your faith and your service to it and members of it but do not want to discuss any of the tenets of it even when they have direct relevance to your political candidacy:

a) Please explain the White Horse Prophecy of Joseph Smith which both you and your father are on record as believers in. Do you believe, as did President Bush express in front of witnesses, that the End Times are near, and that in a time of crisis the Mormon Church will rise up and take over the Government of the U.S. and set up a Mormon theocracy to build the New Zion in America?

“You will see the constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread…A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America…[T]he land will be left without a Supreme Government…[Mormonism] will have gathered strength, sending out Elders to gather the honest in heart…to stand by the Constitution of the United States…In these days…God will set up a Kingdom, never to be thrown down…[T]he whole of America will be made the Zion of God.” (Joseph Smith, May, 6, 1843, founder of Mormonism, quoted in “One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church” by Richard Abanes, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, NY. 2002, p xvi)

“Listeners of KSL Radio’s “The Doug Wright Show” were surprised on November 9, 1999 when Wright’s guest, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (a devout Mormon) quoted the infamous “White Horse” prophecy. The prediction by Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, contains what has always been the Mormon American Dream–i.e. the transformation of the U.S. government into a Mormon-ruled theocracy divinely ordained ‘not only to direct the political affairs of the Mormon community, but eventually those of the United States and ultimately the world.” (Ibid. p. xvii)

b) Do you believe in the Doctrine of “Blood Atonement” and death for apostates, adulterers, interracial marriage, homosexuality and certain other offenses?

c) Do you believe that Jesus and Lucifer were spirit brothers and sons of a god, one of many in a hierarchy of “Godhood”, once a mortal man like you, who became a higher order god named Elohim, and who fathered Jesus via actual sexual intercourse with Mary who, at the time, was his own spirit daughter and betrothed to Joseph?

c) Do you believe that white skin is “pure and delightsome” and that dark skin is either the “Mark of Caine” in the case of Blacks or “Mark of Ham” in the case of American Indians or Lamanites or one of the alleged “Lost Tribes of Israel” and that dark skin is a curse of ugliness? Do you believe that “As man is, God once was and as God is, man can become”?

4) Governor, you say you want to lower tax rates for everyone and will offset the rate cuts for the rich, with tax credit and exemptions reduced so that tax liabilities of the rich, and their share of total government revenues do not change. But anyone in business knows that it is actual tax liabilities, not tax rates, that are what are a factor, one factor–among many–in investment and job creation including where, when, as well as how much investment and what kinds of jobs and how many are created. Then where are the stimulative effects on growth, key to any scheme to reduce tax rates and not cause rising deficits and debt, if the cuts in rates are offset with cuts in exemptions such that actual tax liabilities remain constant?