WASPs and I'm Not Talkin Bees

The religion of political candidates didn't become important, in my lifetime, until I was in high school. In 1960, John F. Kennedy was running against Richard M. Nixon. Nixon was a Quaker and Kennedy was a Roman Catholic.

Yes, there had been a Catholic or two who had run for president in the past, namely Al Smith (1928) and Alf Landon (1936), but most folks knew they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. However, those "mackerel snappers" (as protestants called Catholics before political correctness), didn't have the charisma of Kennedy. JFK was young, intelligent and handsome; everything all the old White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) candidates were lacking including Nixon. This had become a very big deal and a great threat to the WASPs of the post WWII generation.

My dad was sure if you voted for Kennedy and he won, there would be a special room built right next to the Oval Office where the Pope would hang out. My dad was convinced that Kennedy would take only the Pope's advice before making any decisions, and my dad was not the only one who believed that claptrap. This was WASP thinking in the 1960s. So my parents voted republican for the rest of their lives.

Now, if my parents were alive today, I wonder how they would vote during this election cycle. If we are to believe the "Birther/Religious ilk", President Obama is not a citizen or a Christian and Mitt Romney is a Mormon which everyone knows is not Christian, but only a cult.

Today's WASPs are a dying breed, but they are trying their hardest to convince us of how white and right they are about the issues that really count in their minds. Behind closed doors, the extremely religious conservatives, more than likely are predicting what could happen if Romney were to be chosen the Republican candidate and elected president. I think I hear them now. "Why he might even have a special cabinet built in the Oval office to hold copies of those gold tablets found by that Joseph Smith." "I bet Old Mitt could even be wearing that weird Mormon underwear on Inauguration Day, and he might insist on taking his oath with his hand on that Book of Mormon instead of our Bible, God forbid."

So, folks, when you hear the whispered suppositions of these "faith experts", consider the source, and what crack pot religious influence really earns our country...less separation between church and state. And this from Romney's own party that claims it is the most interested in preserving the American constitution.