. . . until the New Hampshire primary.
In his effort to out-tough Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney has made it public that he supports employment discrimination against Muslims, at least as far as his cabinet is concerned:
I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…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."
Steve Benen thinks this position will actually help Romney in the Republican primary:
It’s painful to recognize, but in modern Republican circles, there is widespread tolerance for intolerance. Open and unabashed discrimination towards certain Americans — Muslims and gays, among others — is not only acceptable to too many conservatives, it’s expected. It’s why Romney’s vow to discriminate against Muslims will probably not hurt him politically — given the ideology of the GOP base, it might even help him.
Although Benen and others have made the point that as a Mormon, Romney ought to be the last person to suggest that members of minority religious faiths should be disqualified from national service, I think his comment was made precisely because he is a Mormon--not in spite of it. Romney is so anxious to convince evangelicals that he is really just like them, despite his Mormon faith, that he has adopted what is actually a fairly widespread belief that non-Christians should not sit anywhere near the levers of American power. This is discouraging and depressing--but that's politics.
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