At the first Presidential Election after Utah attained statehood, it voted by four to one for William Jennings Bryan. Utah voted for FDR and for LBJ. The West was of course the heart and soul of the Farm-Labor and similar movements.
The LDS grandees have never been happy that the Republican Party has come in more recent years to be seen as their "church party", and quietly have not failed to notice its failure to deliver the goods on things like abortion.
And now, the Tea Party, which has taken pro-life and pro-family causes off the Republican agenda in preference for other things entirely, has not only removed Bob Bennett, LDS aristocrat and erstwhile National Guard Chaplain, from the Senate, but is threatening to do the same thing to Orrin Hatch, Mormon bishop.
Mormonism is going mainstream. But that need not necessarily be good news for the Republican Party.
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Great post. Does anybody actually still believe that the GOP really cares about social conservatives, except when it is election time, and increasingly, not even then?
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