Whoopsie--The View on Whoopi's Failed Mormon Smear

Ann Romney taped an appearance on ABC's The View. When the visit got serious (4:14 mark of video), panelist Whoopie Goldberg posed a poignant question to the prospective First Lady:

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: As first lady, if you get the job, it’s going to entail a lot of things, and one of those things is going to be talking to the mothers whose children are coming home in bags, you know, from wars. Now, I know -- I believe that your religion doesn’t allow you to go fight.

ANN ROMNEY: No, that's not correct. We have many, many members of our faith that are serving in armed services.

GOLDBERG: Okay, um, I say that because when I read about your husband, what I had read, and maybe you can correct this is that the reason that he didn’t serve in Vietnam was because it was against the religion. That’s what I read.

 ROMNEY: No, that's not correct. He was serving his mission and you know my five sons have also served missions. None served in the military.

It seems that Ms. Goldberg confused the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons) with Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists or other small American Christian pacifist oriented denominations.

 Mrs. Romney was astute to highlight all of her sons being called to mission (through their church) which helped mature them and them better citizens. It tacitly acknowledged Mormon culture while accentuating the virtues from the practice.

 Perhaps Goldberg was not at all ignorant about Latter Day Saint practice of faith.  Her query gave credence to the chicken hawk charge (never served in uniform) as well as implying strange religious practices while conjuring notions of body bags from future American "aggression".

Whoopi's whoopsie strikes me as a ham-handed attempt to play the Mormon card.  This sort of ad hominem attack seems like a desperate ploy to bolster a faltering incumbent by scaring unconvicted low-information voters with borderline religious bigotry.  It could also have been foray to bog the Romney campaign to explain subtleties of Mormon theology, which can differ with most traditional Christian creeds.

Of course, First Lady Michelle Obama and President Obama got comparative softball questions when they were last on the View on September 25th, rather than meet with any world leaders after addressing the United Nations.   That was when "Barack" said that he was just eye candy. Yet that fluff View interview still made some important news because Mr. Obama's careful statement about the attack on the Benghazi consulate contradicts the supposed Rose Garden "Act of Terrorism" claim at the Hofstra debate.




Obviously the producers of "The View" were remiss at doing background briefs for their coterie of star chatters.  But progressive minds also seemed to have missed the memo from Chicago about now eschewing negative advertising.  Karl Rove observed that the Obama campaign has pulled negative ads in swing states and now is only showing positive pieces touting Obama's accomplishments.  It seems that the debates have wrecked $100 million negative advertising blitz on opponent Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA).   Maybe the Obama campaign is relying upon their media surrogates to continue doing the dirty work as well as the puerile social media Binders of Women meme.

h/t: Real Clear Politics