Mitt Romney and the Mormons as Borg

Particularly pernicious is the much-trumpeted idea that if he were President, Romney’s Mormonism would rub off on the rest of us: Ian Williams, writing in the New York Times, says, “With no marriages outside the church, zero tolerance of homosexuality and very little coffee, the L.D.S. worldview would positively smother most Americans.” Writers and scholars have also exhumed the same accusations of cabalism and religious enforcement that dogged John F. Kennedy, whose Catholicism made some wonder if his chief allegiance would be to the U.S. or the pope. The Atlantic’s Brian Fung goes so far as to compare Romney to a robot, no doubt because that is what churches produce. And then there are all the magic underwear jokes. It’s hard to tell whether the prospect of a Mormon presidency is apparently supposed to be more terrifying or comical.

— Mitt Romney: Mormon, robot, or Mormon Robot? Germane, as “the Mormon card” is what Kennedy played in the 1994 Senate race against Romney.