Mitt Romney's Spectacularly Sexist Attack Ad Elucidates Mormon Misogyny

Willard "Mitt" Romney, the former governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has been running hard in New Hampshire throughout 2007, spending millions of dollars on television ads targeting Republicans and crossover voters in the run-up to the Republican Presidential primary. New Hampshire has more registered independent voters than registered Republicans or Democrats and a semi-open primary in which Independents, on Election day, can request the ballot of either party. To woo Independents as well as Republicans, Romney pitches many of his ads as if he is fighting a general election, attacking the Democratic candidates. (From February 2007, when he announced his candidacy, though July, Romney personally spent $4.9 million on his TV ad campaigns, according to the Associated Press. He has a personal fortune estimated at $250 million.)

Romney recently launched an attack ad in the New Hampshire TV market that features a speech attacking Hillary Clinton, the favorite for the Democratic Presidential nomination, before a cheering crowd. In the ad, he bitterly denounces Hillary for having no real-life experience running a business, or a government, or anything at all in contrast to himself, a successful businessman who ran a state and operated the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games. His theme is change (the Olympic Games were tainted by scandal before Romney took over), and he positions himself as an agent of change, in contrast to Hillary, who is not only portrayed as powerless, but immature. He says that the United States can't afford Hillary undertaking an "internship" in which she will have to learn the Presidency.

The most recent debate among the Democratic Presidential candidates saw Hillary the target of a fusillade of rhetorical bullets, as the other candidates, all of whom are trailing her in the polls, criticized Clinton for flip-flopping on major issues and for obfuscating others. In response to the ganging up on her by the other candidates (all of whom are male), the mass media reports that Clinton apparently attempted to play the "gender card" among her extant supporters as well as among professional women (her base of choice among targeted potential support groups), essentially characterizing her Party opponents as sexist bullies.

It's normal for candidates trailing in the polls to single out the front-runner for rough treatment -- her husband Bill suffered similarly in 1992, being denounced as the "Pander Bear" by former Senator Paul Tsongas during a debate in New Hampshire -- and the media has run opinion pieces saying she can expect more, that the attacks only will get worse. However, in light of the Mitt Romney ad, can't we ask ourselves: Is Mrs. Clinton's defensiveness so out of line? Is her contention that she has been the victim of a collective sexism so far-fetched? Furthermore, does the Romney attack ad elucidate the truth of the situation? Or more importantly, does it hold a mirror up to Mitt Romney himself and the problem inherent in his religion with its history of institutionalized sexism?

To put her reaction in context, Clinton was born into a society in which women were not allowed to attend many of the top universities or the military academies. Institutionalized sexism was the rule, not the exception. The Romney attack ad hearkens back to an earlier time when women, like people of color, generally were invisible.

In his attack ad, Romney really is not questioning Clinton's competence as a politician: her political pedigree is far more impressive than is Mitt Romney's. Clinton's resume includes 14 years as an activist First Lady of the state of Arkansas and eight years as an activist First Lady of the United States, as Hillary modeled herself after Eleanor Roosevelt, whose agenda helped influence public policy, particularly in the area of Civil Rights, during F.D.R.'s four administrations. Hillary Clinton has spent almost seven years spread over two terms in the U.S. Senate, while Romney is a failed candidate for the Senate and a one-term governor who didn't run for reelection for the simple fact he likely would not have won. Romney, who was succeeded by a Democrat after the Republicans held the governor's office in the most Democratic of states for 16 straight years, would have seen his political ambitions, always greater than just the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, quashed if he had run for reelection and had been defeated. (Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, facing the same problem, stepped down from the Senate rather than risk defeat and the dashing of his presidential ambitions.)

No, Romney's ad really isn't attacking Clinton as a politician, but as a human being: In short, it is promoting the idea that a woman should not be president, not questioning whether she can be, as it does on the surface. (The Mormon Church has a long history of employing rhetorical strategies that say one thing to the "gentiles" while signaling something different to the Mormon faithful.) The public knows Hillary Clinton can be President, indeed, that she is most experienced person among the candidates whose hats are in the ring, as she was virtually an assistant president during her husband Bill's two terms. Romney's ad is pure, unadulterated sexism, likely fueled by his Mormon religion. It is an appeal to a sexist no-nothingness, and it represents a re-branding of the political bigotry that has been part of this nation's political climate since its start and that is enshrined in its Constitution until Supreme Court-mandated reforms beginning in the 1950s.

That Hillary Clinton helped run a law firm, that she ran a household as a wife and mother, that she helped her husband run a state and a country are ignored by Mitt Romney as surely as the contributions of housewives and mothers were ignored until Betty Friedan blew the whistle on such unconscionable bias with The Feminine Mystique.

Let there be no mistake about it: Hillary always was a lightening rod for those reactionaries that believed a woman's place was in the home. We must ask ourselves: Is Romney akin to Ronald Reagan and other right-wingers like Pat Buchanan, who longed for the days of the pre-Warren Court 1940s and early '50s, or does he desire a transformation of the U.S. into a simulacrum of his native Mormon-dominated Utah, in which concepts of gender and racial equality aren't even broached, let alone a part of consensually defined reality?

What does this attack ad say about Romney? The singling out Mrs. Clinton for a bare-knuckled bruising over particular issues or for doing the time-honored politician's tack of blowing with the wind by the Democratic so-far also-rans falls within the pale of politics as usual, despite Mrs. Clinton's harping, but Romney's attacking her competence as a person by highlighting her incompetence as a woman is quite another. It is a throwback to a time where a Roman Catholic or a Jew could not be expected to be a successful candidate for national office.

Of the 42 men who have been President of the United States, 41 were Protestants, either nominally or in practice. Since 1928, only three Roman Catholics have won the nomination of a major party for President, and only one Jew has been on a national ticket. Should he win the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, who is running as a quasi-Protestant with a pitch towards fundamentalists and evangelical Christians, would be the first member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints to be the candidate of a major political party. (The theology of Mormonism is rooted in the Reformation movement of Martin Luther and John Calvin as many Mormon converts were Protestants, including Joseph Smith, the founder of the 19th-Century cult who dabbled in "scrying stones" and used a pagan "Jupiter medal" to aid his money-dowsing. The Roman Catholic Church and the United Methodist Church require converting Mormons to be re-baptized as neither considers the LDS to be a true Christian church, its concept of god to be so out-of-the-mainstream. The Methodists stated that the LDS "does not fit within the bounds of the historic, apostolic tradition of the Christian faith." )

The sexism of the ad is, I believe, underscored by the tasteless allusion about the country not being able to afford Hilary Clinton serving an "internship" in Washington, a reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. A very low blow, the unchivalrous Romney seeks to humiliate Clinton as both a wife and as a woman.

Is there a deeper message to this willingness of Romney to point out to that Mrs. Clinton was cuckolded by her husband? I believe there is, as the Mormon religion's central tenant has been the cuckolding of women since the day that Joseph Smith went behind his blanket and was told by his odd gods, one of them the aptly named Moroni (surely an example of a pre-Freud Freudian slip), to take multiple wives.

In the subtext of this ad, it's not so much that Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary as the fact that, as a woman, she is fated to be cheated on. Romney's ad equates her with Monica Lewinsky, as The Intern (likely a doppelganger/stand-in for the Biblical Whore of Babylon), someone forever to be a second class citizen to be handled and besmirched by men, and someone, lacking the true faith (be it modern American conservatism or Mormonism) fated to never grow up, to never obtain maturity, be it as spiritual, sexual (in the terms of gender), or political.

Romney is attempting to cast Hillary as a distaff Peter Pan for the 21^st century, which speaks less of Mrs. Clinton than it does of Romney and his Mormon-rooted misogyny. That Hillary Rodham started out in politics as a "Goldwater Girl", supporting the father of the modern American conservative movement, Barry Goldwater, must suggest back-sliding if not apostasy to Romney and other true believers. It is important to understand that Romney ran in Massachusetts as a Rockefeller Republican in the guise of former Governor William Weld, but hid his true colors. A Mormon, in exile among "gentiles" in an alien place far from his home base, learns to dissemble to the gentiles at an early age.

Romney is drawing the line in the sand: How can we have a woman as president of this nation, when other nations will besmirch her AND the Republic as she's -- just a woman. The Intern Monica Lewinsky merely brought down the Bill Clinton Presidency; The Intern Hillary Clinton could very well bring down the United States.

The Mormon religion is characterized by the same kind of egregious sexism that reactionaries point to in showing their disrespect for Islam. The Church of the Latter-day Saints has, from the very beginning, treated women as distinctly second class. In Jessica Longaker's article "Women and Mormonism" from Religious Studies (27 March 95) , she writes, "The Mormon position on women has changed little since the early 1800's, when the official view was that 'woman's primary place is in the home, where she is to rear children and abide by the righteous counsel of her husband.' This attitude, coupled with the doctrine of polygamy and the absolute power claimed by the men of the church, created a legacy of profound sexism which modern Mormonism has been unable to escape."

The root of this inability to shake off sexism, which many religions have managed to do in their evolution into the 21^st Century, has to do with the structure of Mormonism itself. Longaker points out that all Mormon males since the age of nine are part of the priesthood, and thus closer to god than are women, who have no such role in the church aside from being broodmares and maids. A woman is never able to achieve maturity, spiritually, for the simple fact that she is a woman. Since spirituality is at the center of religion, a Mormon woman is never able to achieve maturity as a person.

"Mormonism has created an ingenious system of oppression, in which opposition towards men is tantamount to arguing with God," Longaker wrote. "The Mormon religion makes no distinction between clergy and laity, at least with regard to men. All Mormon men are ordained as members of the 'priesthood,' with the absolute authority to preach the gospel, bestow blessings, prophecy, perform healings and baptisms, and generally speak for God."

Mitt Romney, when condemning Hillary Clinton and bringing up the fact that a woman's presidency would be an "internship", something inferior, something inviting violation, is speaking for the Mormon gods.

According to Longaker, "Girls and boys are also told that a good and proper Mormon home is a patriarchal one. A handbook written for fourteen year old boys states that, 'The patriarchal order is of divine origin and will continue throughout time and eternity.' Husbands conduct family prayers, bless their wives and children, and generally control the household."

This brings us once again to the issue of polygamy which, despite Mitt Romney's protestations to the contrary, remains a central tenant of the religion. According to Longaker, in its long history of feigned assimilation to avoid persecution by the gentile majority, the Mormon religion has proved to be exceedingly canny. The church, on the surface, has banned polygamy, and indeed, mainstream Mormons are limited to a single wife in this material world, where the gentile presence, codified in federal anti-polygamy laws targeting Mormons, has to be acknowledged. (In 1978, faced with a loss of federal funds, the Mormon church finally allowed African Americans to obtain the priesthood, when the President of the Church went into his special chamber with his scrying glass and got the O.K. from the Mormon gods, no morons they, when it comes to the issue of keeping one's hand in the federal government's pocket. ) However, in the spiritual realm which is central to the Mormon male's identity, individual Mormon males are permitted multiple wives.

In the odd cosmology crafted by Joseph Smith from the Bible, Masonic lore, turn-of-the-19^th century novels, and the scuttlebutt of rag-and-bone shops of northern New York State patronized by money-dowsers and other assorted weirdoes, each Mormon man, after he perishes, will be transported to a planet where he will reign eternally as suzerain. The planet is stocked with celestial wives who will bear him spirit children, and this garden of unearthly delight, such as the afterlife envisioned by Muslim jihadists stocked with 70 and 2 sloe-eyed virgins, is being prepared for him right now. Such is the bizarre belief system which informs Mitt Romney's political beliefs and would affect his presidency. It certainly has affected his practical politics, as elucidated by the Hillary attack ad.

It's not a stretch to say that Mitt Romney's attack on Hillary Clinton is rooted in the reactionary policies of his religion, in which women are second-class citizens. In Mitt Romney's world, a woman cannot lead for the very fact that she is a woman. That a woman as accomplished as Mrs. Clinton has played many roles, including wife and mother and First Lady of this nation, is utterly ignored in Romney's sexist construction.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy's religion was a major issue, specifically, that as a practicing Catholic, he would be unduly influenced by the Pope. Kennedy put that issue behind him with a pledge of his independence. Since his Irish Catholic father has already been vetted by the WASP establishment as an Ambassador to the Court of St. James and as a Democratic Party Establishment moneybags, it was felt that J.F.K. could be trusted as a man of his word. When we look to Romney's father for guidance on the son's behavior, we find out that George Romney's 1968 candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination floundered because of a comment he made about being "brainwashed" to accept President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Vietnam policy.

Brainwashed. Considered the front-runner in 1967, Romney pere's candidacy came apart during the primary season because it was felt that no one with aspirations towards the Presidency should be so mentally weak and politically naive to be in a position to be brainwashed. Did the reaction a generation ago also speak to the public's uneasiness with a religion whose outlandish doctrines and history, such as the contention that Amerindians are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, signify the brainwashing of the adult adherent who hadn't rejected such nonsense? (D.N.A. testing has proven that there is no genetic connection between Amerindians and Sephardic Jews, thus scientifically disproving one of the central tenants of the Mormon religion and revealing the Mormon "gods" to be liars. The LDS ignores the inconvenient truth.)

There is nothing in Willard "Mitt" Romney's behavior that indicates that he is not influenced, in toto, by his religion, which is deeply reactionary and runs counter to post-World War II trends towards tolerance and inclusiveness that is now enshrined not just in the political culture, but in the law of these United States. The vicious attack ad against Hillary Clinton, rather than promoting Romney's candidacy, may very well help undermine it as it engenders a backlash among thoughtful voters.