Thursday, March 29, 2007

Mormons at odds with Cheney, BYU's speaker

Why is Dick Cheney being invited to speak at BYU's graduation again? Many people still assume that Saints support Bush-Cheney blindly. Well think again:
A January poll by The Salt Lake Tribune showed a precipitous drop in support for Bush's handling of the war among Utah's Latter-day Saints.
In the survey, just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormon said they backed Bush's war management. That's a level considerably higher than Bush gets from Utah's non-Mormon population and the nation at large, but it's also a 21 percentage point drop from just five months earlier. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.
Such abrupt moves in group opinion are uncommon. Pollsters say numbers generally move gradually, unless "spooked" by something.
But what?

Um could it be the thousands of dead US soldiers, several of whom where from Utah and LDS? Maybe it was another speaker at BYU:
Speaking to Brigham Young University students on Oct. 31, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley lamented "the terrible cost of war."
"What a fruitless thing it so often is," he said. "And what a terrible price it exacts."

Hinkley Institute of Politics Director Kirk Jowers notes that interpreting statements from Pres. Hinkley is like reading the tea leaves of Alan Greenspan's testimony. But how could he just be talking about war in general when the most obvious one of all is staring us all in the face?

And what popular Gov. and LDS Church member Huntsman? "The security situation is Baghdad is out of hand," said Huntsman. "I am less optimistic about a successful outcome."

So tell me again, why is it that an unpopular man among Mormons, who leads an unpopular war among Mormons being invited to BYU?

1 comment:

Kempe Naegle Nicoll said...

You need to change the title of this to "Some Mormons at odds..." Ronald Reagan dealt with all the backlash that the current administration dealt with during the Cold War. Only some Mormons are ignorant to history and what the cost of freedom is.