Okay, how did we miss this one?
Have we--Progressives, Liberals, the Left; but also the MSM--become so inured to Republican attempts to override the Constitution at the highest levels that a front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination can publicly declare that the Constitution needs to be violated and no one even notices?
Because if not, where's the explosive outrage at the following comment from leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney?:
He [Romney] showed poise when a heckler attacked him for being a Mormon: "You, sir, you are a pretender. You do not know the Lord."
The audience booed the heckler.
"One of the great things about this land is that we have people of different faiths and different religions, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country," he [Romney] said, as the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's just step back from the political cockfight for a moment and run that one again: "'we need to have a person of faith lead the country,' he said, as the audience gave him a standing ovation."
Excuse me, Mr. Romney, but this is what Article VI of the Constitution says:
. . . no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
No. Religious. Test. Ever. None. Zilch. No test of faith. No test to see whether there is any faith. No legal, constitutional, possible way to make being "a person of faith" a qualification for leading the country. No way to make faith, or lack thereof, a legitimate criterion of presidential leadership without very explicitly violating the Constitution.
Clearly, though, that's exactly what Mr. Romney wants to do.
And his proposal received a standing ovation.
I submit that this episode tells us something of very great importance--not so much about Mitt Romney, who has already revealed himself to be an ideological contortionist of acrobatic virtuosity and who may yet succeed to the insignificance he merits; but about ourselves and our country.
The presidency of George W. Bush has after all involved the incessant, insidious, inexorable corrosion of the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. There was a time when one might have supposed that such corrosion would provoke riots--or at least fulminating editorials, all manner of official admonitions, hearings, censures, and the very real likelihood of impeachment. But the Bush years have taught us otherwise. Most people don't know, or don't care, or don't care to know, what has happened; and 90 percent of those who do care are editorial writers no one reads, Constitutional lawyers no one listens to, or bloggers on dailykos.
Until now, however, one might have clung to some shred of hope that if it failed to set off the loud alarm bells it warrants, the direct and public disavowal of a cardinal principle of the Constitution by a major presidential candidate would at least elicit some tinkle of dissonance in the ears of those who make and comment on the news. But no: Romney's pronouncement was met instead by thunderous silence in the nation at large--and a standing ovation among those who heard it personally.
I realize that he made the comment as a rebuke to bigotry. But that is no excuse; it is, in fact, the most depressing fact of all. Because if we must have a "person of faith" (whatever that superbly vapid phrase may mean) to lead the country, then the fundamental concession to bigoted unconstitutionality has already been made, and all that remains to be resolved is the speed of our complete capitulation.