Mitt Romney’s Polygamist Family Past Could Be A Sore Spot On Campaign Trail
The Obama administration has already said it considers the Romney family’s polygamist past off limits. In fact an Obama spokeswoman recently took the time to note “attacking a candidate’s religion is out of bounds, and our campaign will not engage in it, and we don’t think others should either.”
However that doesn’t mean Mitt Romney won’t come under attack over his family’s past as Democrat supporting groups begin to focus their attention towards the presumptive GOP candidate.
At the heart of the issue is the fact that Romney’s father was born in a polygamist commune in Mexico after Romney’s grandfather fled the United States to avoid American laws against polygamy.
During the GOP primaries some evangelical groups took issue with the Romney family past and a recent poll has shown that women in general are not big supporters of polygamy with “86% saying they were not fans of polygamy.”
Even if some religious groups fight against the Mitt Romney campaign based on a past he had no part in participating in, the truth is voters have overlooked even closer links to that polygamist past, most specifically in Romney’s father George who managed to become the governor of Michigan and then went on to serve in the Richard Nixon cabinet before making an unsuccessful presidential run of his own.
It should be noted that Mitt Romney’s grandparents were in a monogamous marriage but fled for northern Mexico as part of the Church of Latter Day Saints, many of whom at the time participated in polygamy.
That last fact didn’t stop Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) from taking a shot at the Romney campaign, claiming that the Mormon GOP candidate will have a hard time appealing to the electorate because his father was “born on a polygamy commune in Mexico.”
The presidential election is all about perception and while the Obama administration may rightfully decide not to attack Romney based on the polygamy stance, that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t mention the words “Romney” and “Polygamy” so many times in the same sentence that people start believing in a false fact.
