{"id":13736,"date":"2007-11-28T09:15:14","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T14:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13736.html"},"modified":"2007-11-28T09:15:14","modified_gmt":"2007-11-28T14:15:14","slug":"witnesses-corroborate-romneys-anti-muslim-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/witnesses-corroborate-romneys-anti-muslim-bigotry\/","title":{"rendered":"Witnesses corroborate Romney’s anti-Muslim bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mitt Romney ran into a little trouble yesterday when the Christian Science Monitor ran a report<\/a> today from Mansoor Ijaz, who recently asked Mitt Romney whether he would consider a Muslim-American for a cabinet post. Concluding that Muslims are too small a religious minority to qualify for a cabinet post, Romney reportedly said he would not.<\/p>\n

Initially, the Romney campaign didn’t deny the reported remarks, but a few hours later, the candidate and his aides moved the goalposts<\/a> a bit — Romney said he was asked whether he needed<\/i> a Muslim-American in his cabinet, not whether he’d consider<\/i> a Muslim-American for his cabinet. Romney added, “I would choose people based on their merits…. I’m open to having people of any faith, ethnic group.”<\/p>\n

There have been several relevant developments since. First, contacted for comment, Ijaz literally called “bullsh*t<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

“This guy is lying now to the American people,” said Ijaz. “He probably never imagined someone would come out and write a piece the way I did. And I think he made a serious mistake in judgment in trying to disown what he said…. Everything he said today is simply trying to reconfigure this item, which is he doesn’t feel there is a need to put people of Islamic faith into his cabinet.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, it’s a he-said\/he-said situation? Not exactly. Greg Sargent reported late-yesterday on accounts from credible Republicans who corroborated Ijaz’s story, and make it clear that Romney has been caught lying about his willingness to discriminate.
\n
\nGreg’s first report<\/a>:<\/p>\n

TPM Election Central has learned that at a private fundraising luncheon in Los Vegas three months ago, Romney said a second time he would probably not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet — and on this occasion, he made other comments that one witness described as “racist.”<\/p>\n

The witness, Irma Aguirre, a former finance director of the Nevada Republican Party, paraphrased Romney as saying: “They’re radical. There’s no talking to them. There’s no negotiating with them.”<\/p>\n

A second witness, a self-described local registered Republican named George Harris, confirmed her account.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aguirre told Greg, “I can’t remember the exact words he used, but that was the explanation. We left thinking, `Wow, what a racist comment. He automatically assumed that all Muslims are radical.'”<\/p>\n

And this led to Greg’s second report<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We’ve now discovered that there’s a contemporaneous account of this episode in something called Liberty Watch Magazine, which Harris publishes. In the September 2007 issue is this account by Editor Mike Zigler: “…when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently addressed a group of a prominent local conservatives at a Las Vegas fundraiser, George lobbed the first question: ‘If you are elected President,” he asked, “will you include any Muslim members in your cabinet?'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Romney said, “Not likely.”<\/p>\n

By any reasonable measure, Mitt Romney said publicly that he would discriminate against Muslims, and did so more than once, and then lied about it. It’ll be interesting to see a) if Republican primary voters care (in some right-wing circles, I’m afraid this might actually help<\/i> Romney); and b) whether the media will bother to take this seriously. So far, this is a fairly big deal online, but traditional outlets have expressed very little interest.<\/p>\n

I know this gets tiresome, but if a leading Democratic candidate vowed to discriminate against a religious minority, and then lied about it, do you suppose reporters might care? The bogus story about a waitress not getting a tip caused a mini-frenzy. Why not Romney’s bigoted remarks?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mitt Romney ran into a little trouble yesterday when the Christian Science Monitor ran a report today from Mansoor Ijaz, who recently asked Mitt Romney whether he would consider a Muslim-American for a cabinet post. Concluding that Muslims are too small a religious minority to qualify for a cabinet post, Romney reportedly said he would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}