Today’s Golden Ass award goes to Montana’s Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, who attempted to tar Mitt Romney by associating him with polygamy.
You have to go pretty far back in the Romney family tree — nearly to the 19th century, in fact — before you find a polygamist. His father was monogamous. His grandfather was monogamous. His great grandfather was not. But Helaman Pratt is not on the ballot, having contracted a severe case of death in 1909, nearly 40 years before Mitt Romney was born.
Does Governor Schweitzer really want to go down that road? His own ancestors are ethnic Germans from Ukraine. What were they like in the nineteenth century? Germans in Ukraine were not especially nice to Jews in those days. The governor’s father fought in World War II — but what was his great grandfather like?
And if we want to get into the sins-of-the-fathers business, it is worth noting that you do not have to go back to the 19th century to find a polygamist in the family of Barack Obama: His father was one. And never mind polygamy — how about slavery? Go back a few more generations in Obama’s family and you’ll find people who owned slaves. As it turns out, the 19th century was not very much like the 21st century, and not just for Mormons.
Given that there is nothing of substance to be learned about Mitt Romney from the habits of his long-dead great grandfather, the only possible conclusion is that Schweitzer and other Democrats are actively cultivating bigotry for political gain. Which has worked for Democrats in the past: