As we have noted several times before, Religious Right radio show host Steve Deace has made a habit of inviting openly anti-Mormon activists onto his program to make the case that Christians cannot vote for Mitt Romney purely because of his faith.
Last night, Deace interviewed Stephen Mansfield, author of the forthcoming book “The Mormonizing of America: How the Mormon Religion Became Became a Dominant Force in Politics, Entertainment, and Pop Culture” to discuss the issue of Romey’s Mormonism once again, during which Deace complained that whenever he criticizes Romney, he gets accused of being an anti-Mormon bigot.
Of course, Deace is not being accused of anti-Mormonism because he is criticizing Romney’s inconsistent record or history of flip-flops but rather because he frequently offers air time to people who liken voting for Romney to voting for Satan. And, in fact, during the discussion with Mansfield, Deace openly wondered how voters can justify supporting candidates just because they might be good on some issues despite that fact they also “believe things that are so crazy” like Mormonism:
What I have found is, you know, I can vet every other Republican candidate running for president the last two cycles, I can vet their record. I can talk about I don’t like Rick Santorum’s endorsement of Arlen Specter and nobody calls me an anti-Catholic bigot. I can vet the record of every other Republican running for … I can vet Rudy Giuliani’s record and nobody calls me a bigot against agnostics. But if I vet Mitt Romney’s record, I’m a religious bigot and this continues on to this day.
…
At some level, when people believe things that are so crazy, does that cancel out where they’re at on anything else?
When Deace was “vetting” the other GOP candidates, he never explicitly attacked any of them for their faith, yet he does exactly that to Romney on a regular basis. So if Deace doesn’t like being called an anti-Mormon bigot, perhaps he ought to stop offering air time to (and agreeing with) anti-Mormon activists.
