From the desk of the Neo-Neocon.

July 11th, 2012

The press and Romney at the NAACP: did you know he was a white Mormon?

Drew M. at Ace’s points out a few things about the press coverage of Romney’s NAACP speech. At this point the anti-Romney slant of the coverage fails to surprise me in the least, but that doesn’t make it any less reprehensible:

So Mitt Romney went to talk to the NAACP today. I didn’t see the whole speech but it seemed like reasonably good stuff. He focused on family, jobs and education. I didn’t see but there were reports he received a good bit of applause when he promised to defend traditional marriage.

Of course the media will not be focusing on that or the applause for charter schools, his invocations of faith or anything else. No, they will focus exclusively on his being booed for saying he’d repeal ObamaCare and that he will do better for blacks than Obama has.

While that sort of hackery is to be expected, a couple of outlets are going well over the line.

First, ABC News is all in on Obama (warning auto playing video).

After focusing on the booing, ABC drops in this little nugget.

Romney, a white Mormon whose father ran for president when blacks weren’t even allowed to join the priesthood, told Obama’s most reliable supporters that they have been let down by the country’s first black president.

Well then. If fathers and religion are on the table, I look forward to discussing the polygamy of Barack Obama Sr. and the racism of Jeremiah Wright. Oh wait, we can’t do that…

Aside from Romney applause lines, what will the media ignore? Obama doesn’t have the guts to go to a hostile crowd like this and give a speech. In fact, Obama won’t even be addressing the NAACP convention. [What's up with that dude?] You’d think sending Job Biden in his place would be enough to turn them against him but it’s probably not.

There’s another thing the media is ignoring: the record of Romney’s father George on civil rights for black people was very—how shall I put it?—progressive. See this:

During his first State of the State address in January 1963, [Governor George] Romney declared that “Michigan’s most urgent human rights problem is racial discrimination—in housing, public accommodations, education, administration of justice, and employment.” Romney helped create the state’s first civil rights commission. 

When Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Detroit in June 1963 and led the 120,000-strong Great March on Detroit, [Governor George] Romney designated the occasion Freedom March Day in Michigan, and sent state senator Stanley Thayer to march with King as his emissary, but did not attend himself because it was on Sunday. Romney did participate in a much smaller march protesting housing discrimination the following Saturday in Grosse Pointe, after King had left. Romney’s advocacy of civil rights brought him criticism from some in his own church; in January 1964, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles member Delbert L. Stapley wrote him that a proposed civil rights bill was “vicious legislation” and telling him that “the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro” and men should not seek its removal. Romney refused to change his position and increased his efforts towards civil rights. Regarding the church policy itself, Romney was among those liberal Mormons who hoped the church leadership would revise the theological interpretation that underlay it, but Romney did not believe in publicly criticizing the church…

When George Romney ran for his second term as governor of Michigan, he received 30% of the black vote, unheard of for a Republican.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons his son Mitt believes that it’s at least possible to gain the support of some black voters this time. At any rate, it’s a story I doubt you’ll be hearing from the MSM.