To me - and many others - Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, is an embarrassment to to the state. While Lynchburg is roughly an hour's drive from Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, it might as well be a thousand miles away in terms of the mindsets. Charlottesville and UVA are modern and progressive, while Liberty University seems to year for a time period prior to 1860 with religious extremism that might please the Inquisition. Yet, Mitt Romney in an obvious move to pander to the worse elements of the Christofascist base of the Republican Party chose to speak to the largely all white crowd at Liberty. Worse yet, he went on to laud the late Jerry Falwell, a very hateful person when measured by his words and actions. A column in the Washington Post looks at Romney and his proclivity to speak to lily white audiences. Here are some excerpts:
Romney’s speeches seem tailor-made for audiences that look pretty much like him. At least that is what one is led to believe after observing where Romney chooses to go and what he has to say.
I tried to imagine Romney’s Liberty address being delivered to the graduates and their families at the 2012 commencement exercises I attended a week ago at historically black Howard University in Washington.
I cannot believe, however, that the Romney campaign apparatus would have allowed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to tell an African American audience numbering in the thousands that Falwell was “a gracious Christian example” and a “courageous and big-hearted minister of the Gospel who . . . never hated an adversary.”
Indeed, Romney lauded Falwell, who famously said: “I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations.”
Romney spoke glowingly of the same Falwell who said of the landmark Supreme Court school desegregation decision: “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never had been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
The same Falwell who disparaged Nobel Peace Prize winner and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a phony. (Falwell later apologized for that remark and claimed that he had misspoken.)
And who can forget Falwell’s finger-pointing after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks? He declared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” show: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’ ”
[W]hat does the man who seeks to lead this country have to say about, and to, this rapidly changing nation of diverse people with diverse interests and needs? Thus far, Romney’s thoughts and policy prescriptions seem focused on America’s largest — and slowest-growing — racial group: his own.
Democratic critics accuse Romney of having values that skew to the rich at the expense of the poor. They say he’s disconnected from the problems of average Americans; that he’s out of touch and just doesn’t get it.
Would that it were only a matter of determining whether Romney is on the side of the rich or middle class.
The question is much broader and more significant: When Mitt Romney thinks and speaks of Americans, do those who don’t look like him even come to mind? Since he launched his presidential campaign, it’s been hard to tell. And Romney’s Liberty University speech was no help.
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