Mitt Romney’s Mormonism was on the minds of many Saturday morning.
Except, perhaps, on the mind of Mitt Romney.
Dr. Robert Jeffress, the Senior Pastor at First Baptist Dallas, introduces and endorses GOP presidential candidate and Texas governor Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. on Friday. (Oct. 7)
At an annual summit of Christian conservatives in Washington, the former Massachusetts governor and frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination sharply criticized President Obama’s handling of the economy, health care and foreign policy.
But absent from Romney’s remarks was any mention of his Mormon religion — a matter that has taken center stage over the past 24 hours after evangelical leader Robert Jeffress on Friday told reporters at the gathering of 3,200 social conservatives that “Mormonism is not Christianity.”
Jeffress had introduced one of Romney’s competitors for the GOP presidential nod, Rick Perry, whose campaign later Friday said that the Texas governor did not share Jeffress’s view that Mormonism is “a cult.”
In his remarks Saturday at the Family Research Council’s annual Values Voter Summit, Romney reprised many of his campaign-trail critiques of Obama.
“He faced a recession, and he made it worse,” Romney told the thousands of conservative Christians gathered in a ballroom of Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel. “He announced a ‘recovery summer.’ A year and a half later, we’re still waiting.”
He criticized the national health-care law as “expensive, intrusive and unconstitutional.”
“Obamacare is a wolf in wolf’s clothing,” Romney said, adding that he would grant waivers to all 50 states to exempt them from the law’s provisions.
He took aim at “the job-killing regulations imposed by the Obama administration” and several times took jabs at the White House over the Solyndra controversy.
While Romney devoted the bulk of his remarks to criticism of Obama on the economy, he took a detour from his prepared remarks to remind the crowd that “decency and civility are values, too” — then went on to take aim at Bryan Fischer, the spokesman for the conservative American Family Association known for his inflammatory remarks about gays, Mormons and others.
“One of the speakers to follow me today has crossed that line, I think,” Romney said of Fischer, who spoke after him Saturday morning. “Poisonous language doesn’t advance our cause; it’s never softened a single heart or changed a single mind. The blessings of faith carry the responsibility of civil and respectful debate. The task before us is to focus on the conservative beliefs and the values that unite us. Let no agenda narrow our vision or drive us apart. We have important work to accomplish.”
Also addressing the Mormonism issue — although without mentioning Romney by name — was conservative commentator Glenn Beck, who spoke later Saturday afternoon.
Beck, who like Romney is Mormon, said about halfway through his 40-minute remarks at the summit that “as people have come onto this stage and been for or against, I guess, members of my faith, I celebrate their right to say those things in America.”
“Let them say those things,” he said. “I am a proud member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior. He redeemed me fully and completely. He is the only reason that I am able to stand here today. I am a proud member of that faith, but more importantly, I am a proud member of the American religion.”
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