Mitt Romney Used Affirmative Action to Get Ahead

on April 21st, 2012 at 2:34 pm

The scandal plagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City needed someone to try and repair Utah’s image. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee had bribed Olympic deciders with scholarships, real estate, jobs, cash, and anything else they could get a hold of, and they turned to Mitt Romney to repair their image. With the help of the United States’ government, Romney claimed success. According to the Daily Caller,

All told, according to Romney’s account, the government spent about $600 million helping the Salt Lake Olympic Committee. An additional $1.1 billion was planned for projects like roads and bridges, infrastructure improvement projects that the government assumed would have paid for eventually, though the timing of the games may have sped up the construction.

The more interesting part is, how did Mitt Romney get the job?

The Salt Lake Committee wasn’t interested in local talent, Romney had spent most of his life in Michigan and was living on the East Coast at the time. They weren’t interested in Olympic experience, Romney had none. They weren’t interested in sports know-how, or non-profit experience, Romney had neither of those. They weren’t interested in getting a high profile name to rescue them, Romney was hardly a household name back then. So what were they interested in?

They were only interested in getting a Mormon– only Mormons need apply. It turns out Romney benefitted from an affirmative action program that discriminated against anyone who wasn’t Mormon. Romney got ahead, not by his skills or training, but through his religion, no fairer than discriminating against people because of their skin color or sex.  That means no Jews need apply, no Christians, no Muslims, or any other religion. Wasn’t this the United States’ Olympic Games?

Besides this being wrong, I thought Mitt Romney was against affirmative action?
According to the book, A Mormon in the White House? : 10 things every American should know about Mitt Romney, author Hugh Hewitt claims
a group of Mormons, led by Ken Gardner and U.S. Senators Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, worked to get Mitt Romney the job. They made sure the job went to a Mormon.
You had to figure politics was involved with Mitt Romney getting the plumb job, but it’s hard to imagine that affirmative action was behind it as well.
└ Tags: , , , , , , , ,