incredibly awkward it is. he went into a whole other mode of roboticism. has nothing to do with what he s talking about. i think it did. i think it was even appreciably worse. but there were, before you get into a fist fight, there were two i don t care to get into a fist fight. you think he s the same? i think he s got troubles on this front regardless of the topic. i would like to make a point here which is in 2007, which is the sound we led in with, mitt romney is making a much more forceful defense of mormonism insofar as he is mentioning the word mormon. he also used the word mormon. he hasn t said the word mormon all year on the record. even more stilted when he goes out of his way to say judeo-christian. i m just saying he s not exactly someone he s got general discomforts talking about himself and mckay, who sees him more than i do would agree with this. i didn t notice the huge discernible difference but maybe i m wrong. also i think that was from
mentioning key differences in mormonism, including the tenet that there is not a unified trinity and that god is a physical presence. in a recent interview, romney alluded to those differences, saying quote, every religion has its own unique doctrines and history. these should not be bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were only reserved for faiths with which we agree. this past sunday, romney revealed even more when he allowed buzzfeed s mckay coppins to attend religious services with him. coppins writes quote, the working thesis of the chattering class has been that romney s discussion of his faith for political reasons but as a sacrament meeting wound down sunday with the congregation singing a hymn titled i need thee every hour and romney fervently joining in, the election seemed far away. mckay coppins joins us now. his article is called i went to church with mitt romney sunday morning. a literal
it s also important to note that this congregation that he was attending in new hampshire is a popular vacation destination for kind of wealthy elite families along the east coast, the marriotts were there, the marriott hotel chain, obviously. so having rich, successful, wealthy people who also happen to be mormons. yeah. it s not a huge deal to have mitt romney there. maggie, when we talk about american attitudes towards mormonism, there has been a lot of analysis about trepidation with the american public accepting a mormon president but the polling seems to indicate, when a question was asked in july what is mitt romney s religion, 60% of the country acknowledged that he is mormon. 9% thought he was other and 32% of the country said they don t know. and when asked whether the american public was comfortable with mitt romney s religion, of those who knew he was a mormon, 60% said they were comfortable. 19% said they were uncomfortable. 21% said it doesn t matter. really, 81%
side vis a vis mormonism. what you ve seen in the last week, mckay has really gotten to this, essentially there was a decision by the campaign, we re just going to show this is it is a religion that people don t necessarily know as much about as other religions, perhaps, such as catholicism and so forth. but we re just going to show demystify this. you re saying those numbers show there is not maybe that much but it s an unknown factor for the campaign. they are planning at the convention, i think, to have a mormon bishop at some point. i think they are going to do a bit more references to religion. look, it is a significant part of mitt romney s background because it s not just what his religion is. he was a bishop in the church. right. they will be introducing that narrative. there is a lot of talk on this show, too, about he needs the humanize himself and talk about the things most important to him, his faith, his money. but one of the things i think is true about that lit
what they bargain for, and then to progressive voters that could actually be a good thing given how mitt romney s environmental policy and energy policy seems to be doubling down on coal, coal, coal and drill, baby drill. but i want to open this up to the folks on the panel right now, because you know, eric, we have talked about climate change, we talked about it last week in light of the droughts that were happening. it is no longer just an environmental issue. this is an economic issue. we talk about american competitiveness and the road forward. the u.s. among 34 developed nations, this is according to the organization for economic cooperation and development, the oecd, we are ranking 25th in math and 17th in science. we are not pursuing any sort of feasible energy policy, there is no bipartisan support to get anything pushed through congress and you talk about science and technology and engineering and math careers, we are not giving our students the tools that they need. we ar