Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

I think there’s an interesting parallel between Obama and Romney. The mainstream media has basically demanded that each repeatedly distance themselves from or repudiate aspects of their church’s (or church leader’s) thought.  I think the media elite’s tacit discomfort with the LDS Church eventually was sublimated into hostility toward Romney. 

My hope is that Obama’s speech on Wright will help immunize him from the kind of “othering” that seriously undermined Romney.  We should also observe the “centrifugal bias” of the media...that the safest way to avoid getting accused of being a part of a “weird” or “unpatriotic” church is to have no church at all. 

As Kierkegaard once observed, one can only be properly said to be “becoming” a Christian--it’s not the type of doctrine one can settle into like a comfortable armchair.  The “hard sayings” of Jesus would never fit into a banally establishment “Christendom” that holds itself aloof from the specifics of particular Christian creeds.

That’s the part of this that puzzles me so much.

Romney spent the primary season trying to present himself as the toughest SOB on the stage—he would “double Guantanamo,” he took a hard line on immigration, his surrogates were flopping all over each other when McCain said that Romney wanted a timetable for the surge.

Not to mention his recent conversion on social issues.

But Obama somehow occupies space between Romney and McCain from a Catholic perspective?  I don’t get it.

I have to second John’s opinion.  Romney bent over backwards to show his conservative credentials because, frankly, he didn’t show much of them in his record as a politician.  In fact, hiring Kmiec was part of that “yes I’m conservative” dance.  Which is what makes Kmiec’s endorsement so weird.

"Judas” is a term that comes to mind, but that damn Carville beat him to it!