http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/whats-race-got-to-do-with-i…

Lee Siegel proves his fealty to Modern Liberalism’s disdain of the Patriarchal Nostalgia of Mormonism and its addiction to 19th Century norms of free born white males: exercising power over all they control and own, the women and children and the chattel of biblical times. Yet Siegel’s attack fails to recognize that Mr. Romney is indeed a political chameleon, some would say a charlatan, who adapts his political position to suit his need,an opportunist to be blunt. But he misses the mind set and world view of modern day Mormons as a highly defined set of beliefs that makes the ‘sunny disposition’ and recitation of political cliches of Mr. Romney explicable, even credible. If you have ever associated with Mormons, you realize that that buoyant optimistic wold view is wedded to a belief system that is not just so much gloss, but part and parcel of a lived, communal practice predicated on a set of definable beliefs as the mainspring of action. And conformism, moral and intellectual, is the sine qua non of that system’s effectiveness.Mr. Siegel effectively paints a portrait of his idea of Mr. Romney as White Patriarchal Romantic,but also neatly defines the parameters of his own undisguised contempt in the process, which makes his essay instructive and morally useful.

Political Observer