This endorsement is a pretty big symbolic win for President Obama.  The Salt Lake Tribune has a circulation over 100,000 daily and caters to the citizens of Salt Lake City city which has the largest concentration of Mormons in a large town or city in the world; of course – Salt Lake City is home to the Mormon church as well.  For the state’s largest newspaper to endorse Obama (a 2nd time) over the first Mormon nominee from one of the major parties is pretty striking.  And further more – the language they used was some of the strongest I’ve seen from an editorial board.

This would be as if the Chicago Tribune had endorsed Mitt Romney; it would just sting rhetorically even if it doesn’t actually change the electoral equation.  A majority of Mormons are proud and excited to see a fellow Mormon being one step away from being President and they should be; having said that – not all Mormons are willing to support Romney’s entrance into fantasy land with his tax and jobs plans nor are they willing to support a man who has run on one of the most extreme platforms in a long time.

The Salt Lake Tribune explains their decision to endorse Obama HERE; a pretty striking rebuke to Romney actually:

More troubling, Romney has repeatedly refused to share specifics of his radical plan to simultaneously reduce the debt, get rid of Obamacare (or, as he now says, only part of it), make a voucher program of Medicare, slash taxes and spending, and thereby create millions of new jobs. To claim, as Romney does, that he would offset his tax and spending cuts (except for billions more for the military) by doing away with tax deductions and exemptions, is utterly meaningless without identifying which and how many would get the ax. Absent those specifics, his promise of a balanced budget simply does not pencil out.

If this portrait of a Romney willing to say anything to get elected seems harsh, we need only revisit his branding of 47 percent of Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, yet feel victimized and entitled to government assistance. His job, he told a group of wealthy donors, “is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Where, we ask, is the pragmatic, inclusive Romney, the Massachusetts governor who left the state with a model health care plan in place, the Romney who led Utah to Olympic glory? That Romney skedaddled and is nowhere to be found.

Comments

comments