The Power Of Captialism: Making People's Lives Better And Healther

Capitalism provided people with the freedom to make major discoveries in science, medicine, nutrition and technology which has increased the life expectancy and wealth of individuals all over the world over a long period of time. Hans Rosling explains: 

Another video takes a different approach in making the same point about how capitalism has helped improve the qualify of life for people: 

Another video demonstrates that capitalism provides the freedom for wealth to expand which makes it possible for living standards to rise for everyone, not just the rich only.  Capitalism has made it possible for the poor today to enjoy things that previous people in poverty could never enjoy before. The video shows how capitialism has raised the income of rich and poor people alike in just the last 40 years. What makes the video you're about to see even more powerful is that not only do we see a comparison between the rich and the poor in the United States but goes one step further by comparing the American poor and the average citizen in Europe, Asia, and Africa:

As shown in these videos above, capitalism has done more to improve the lives of humankind than any other political, social or economic system invented by mankind.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters do not realize that we stand on the shoulders of the men and women in the past who made these amazing discoveries which has led to further discoveries that made it possible to enjoy the life we live today. In fact, these protesters fail to see the irony in their protests against capitalism. One photo demonstrates the irony perfectly:   

In attempt to get the world to wake up to the flaws of capitalism, they are unknowingly promoting the benefits of capitalism by using products created by business organizations who have the economic freedom to create products and services in their protests against capitalism.

Why Iran Attempted Terrorist Attacks Against the United States

Today, I read an blog article over at Hot Air in which Allahpundit expressed confusion over Iran's choice to conduct a failed terrorist operation in the Middle East. Allahpundit isn't the only one who is confused by Iran's actions. A lot of people are. 

However, I highly recommend a book called Why They Hate Us: Middle Eastern Politics and the Principle of the Strong Horse, authored by Lee Smith. The title of the book, according to Lee Smith comes from Bin Laden’s observation that when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse. 

Lee Smith gave a long interview with Michael Totten in January 2010 in which he talked about his observation about Middle Eastern politics. I will be using quotes from this interview to explain why Iran made a sloppy and poor attempt to conduct terrorist attacks against the United States. 

Osama Bin Laden's observation reveals alot about how the Middle East works. Its also relevant to understanding why a nation like Iran would conduct a sloppy terrorist organization in the United States. 

In order to understand how Bin Laden's observation applies to Iran's botched terrorist attempt, you have know how crucial violence is in Middle Eastern culture and politics:  

To say that Lebanon is held at gunpoint by an armed gang, or that Lebanese journalists are assassinated for their work, Syrian intellectuals and Egyptian rights activists are typically thrown in prison and tortured, and regional minorities like the Shia, Druze, Alawi, Christians, Kurds and Jews have often been the target of purges and political violence all in the name of Arab nationalism, a corporatist ideology that seeks to erase communal as well as individual difference, is not to say that Arabs only understand force, but that violence is a central factor in Arab political life and it is impossible to understand the region without taking this into account. 

Given how central violence is to the Middle East politics, it become easy to see why these countries use violence to maintain national security within that region:

Instead I tend to see 9/11 like this: Middle Eastern regimes, almost all of them, but most notably Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia use various so-called non-state actors to advance their regional interests and deter each other. For instance, Syria’s relationship with Jordan’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Action Front, and Jordan’s friendliness toward the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, means that these two states effectively deter each other—if you use Islamists against me, I will unleash Islamists on you.  

Understand that terrorism a national security tool that Middle Eastern states use and can be considered a unofficial branch of their armed forces:

The jihadi movement, what is often referred to as a transnational network of rogue or non-state actors, is a function of Arab regimes and their security services. 

As a result, according to Lee Smith, terrorism is a foreign policy tool of the Middle East:

Islamist terrorism, is a function of states. Yes, it is an ideological movement with its own history and sources and political ambitions that run counter to the current nation-state system of the Arabic-speaking Middle East; but it is a movement that is sustained by Middle Eastern regimes and their intelligence services who use terror organizations to advance their own strategic interests and deter other states from using terror organizations against them. 

However, despite the fact that Middle Eastern countries use terrorism to project power as well as for foreign and domestic policy reasons, it reveals a major weakness that actually demonstrates how weak these nations really are: 

The fact is that Arab states are weak as it is, and I’m not referring to their inability to provide a better life for their peoples. I mean they can’t defend themselves. The fact they use Al Qaeda to protect them from Iran, and each other, is evidence they are feeble affairs. The Saudis and Egyptians and the rest of the Arabs are waiting on the Israelis to strike the Iranian nuclear program because they can’t do anything about it themselves. As I was saying above, the Arab moment is over, by which I mean the Arabs no longer set the tone and tempo of the region, nor are they even capable of shaping their own destiny. If the Israelis do attack the Iranians it will reveal for all to see what is quite clearly the case: the major regional nodes now are Israel, Iran and perhaps an ascendant Turkey. That’s who is calling the shots in the Middle East today, not the Arabs.

Despite the fact that terrorism reveals how weak Middle Eastern states are in projecting power and maintaining national security, many of these countries still use terrorism as a tool to achieve its foreign policy goals and to prevent other states from achieving their foreign policy goals against them because it is still effective and useful to many of these Middle Eastern nations.

Here's why I think people shouldn't be so confused as to why Iran would conduct a poor terrorist operation. 

Everyone assumes or expects Iran to carry out the operation succesfully and professionally. 

The fact that Iran didn't conduct this mission successfully or professional wasn't the point. The point was to send a message the United States government that it could conduct terrorist attacks unless America agrees to whatever demands Iran is requesting through official and unofficial diplomatic channels. 

However, while Iran's botch terror attempt was designed to communicate a message to America, the real or actual intended recipient of this message wasn't for our country. Iran was sending a message back home to its Middle Eastern neighbors in which it was letting other countries know that they are the strongest horse in the region because it dared to attack the America.  As a result, this is a message warning other nearby states not to mess or interfere with Iran. This message could be because some Middle Eastern nations have joined the international community in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  

If you think this idea is bizzare, check out Lee Smith's reason for why Iran is involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: 

The same holds true for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Why does Iran care so much about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? They don’t share a border with Israel, they have not taken in Palestinian refugees like Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, nor are they even an Arab state. Sure, it is a Muslim power and Jerusalem is important to Muslims, but Indonesia is also a Muslim state and it is not anywhere near as vocal as the Tehran regime on this subject; nor of course does the Indonesian government provide many hundreds of millions of dollars of financial support to armed groups that fight Israel, like Hezbollah and Hamas, as the Iranians do.

The reason Iran has inserted itself in the Arab-Palestinian crisis is in order to project power in the region by shaming Sunni states, like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. All of these states, US allies, either have peace treaties with Jerusalem or have opted out of any active participation in the war against Israel. The Iranians calculate that the Arab masses prefer resistance to reform, accommodation and compromise, and so Tehran has picked up the banners of war that the Sunni states have put down. Again, this is not to say that Iran’s rhetoric about destroying Israel is all a put-on, I don’t think it is. But the main reason they are ratcheting up the noise is because they see resistance ideology as a way to get a leg up, as you put it, on their real regional adversaries, the Sunni Arab states. And these countries, along with Israel, are all part of the US-backed order of the Middle East, which means that Iran’s posture toward the Sunnis, as well as Israel, is an enormous issue for us, our major strategic concern right now in the Middle East, bigger than Afghanistan, bigger than Iraq and much bigger than the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

With a little extra understanding of the "strong horse" concept in Middle Eastern politics, Iran's actions aren't really that confusing.

Religious Leaders Stepping Forward & Rebuking Pastor Robertt Jeffress' Comments About The LDS Church

More pastors are coming to Romney's defense after Pastor Robert Jeffress's comment about voting for a candidate who happens to be a Momon. 

Today, Rev. Myke Crowder, who is the executive council member of the the National Clergy Council, representing church leaders from all Christian traditions including fundamentalist and evangelical, and is also a senior pastor in Utah, released a statement condemning Jeffress:

"As an evangelical, born-again, Bible-believing Christian, and a pastor with more than 25 years' experience living with and ministering among a majority Mormon population, I find the comments by Pastor Jeffress unhelpful, impolite and out of place," he said. "Insulting Mitt Romney adds nothing to the conversation about who should be president. We're picking the country's chief executive, not its senior pastor."

Another Christian leader also came forward to criticize Pastor Robert Jeffress' statements about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Richard J. Mouw is President of Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical school in Pasadena, California also stepped forward in defense of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and explained that Mormons are a not cult:

So are Mormons Christians? For me, that’s a complicated question.

My Mormon friends and I disagree on enough subjects that I am not prepared to say that their theology falls within the scope of historic Christian teaching. But the important thing is that we continue to talk about these things, and with increasing candor and mutual openness to correction.

No one has shown any impulse to walk away from the table of dialogue. We do all of this with the blessing of many leaders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of whom have become good friends.

While I am not prepared to reclassify Mormonism as possessing undeniably Christian theology, I do accept many of my Mormon friends as genuine followers of the Jesus whom I worship as the divine Savior.

I find Mormons to be more Christ-centered than they have been in the past. I recently showed a video to my evangelical Fuller Seminary students of Mormon Elder Jeffrey Holland, one of the Twelve Apostles who help lead the LDS church. The video captures Holland speaking to thousands of Mormons about Christ’s death on the cross.

Several of my students remarked that if they had not known that he was a Mormon leader they would have guessed that he was an evangelical preacher.

The current criticisms of Mitt Romney’s religious affiliation recall for many of us the challenges John Kennedy faced when he was campaigning for the presidency in 1960.

Some well-known Protestant preachers (including Norman Vincent Peale) warned against putting a Catholic in the White House. Kennedy’s famous speech to Houston pastors clarifying his religious beliefs as they related to his political leadership helped his cause quite a bit.

But the real changes in popular attitudes toward Catholicism happened more slowly, as Catholic Church leaders and scholars engaged in a new kind of dialogue with each other and representatives of other faith groups, most dramatically at the Second Vatican Council during the early years of the 1960s.

Cults do not engage in those kinds of self-examining conversations. If they do, they do not remain cults.

Pat Robertson, who recently stated that he is no longer directly endorsing political candidates, stated that he accepted Mitt Romney as a Christian: 

Robertson said he would continue to comment on the news of the day and noted he likes Mitt Romney's politics. He said he considers the Mormon candidate "an outstanding Christian," but declined to say if he would be OK with a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the White House.

Other well known religious people have, in the past prior to Pastor Jeffress's comments, defended the claim that Mormons are Christians: For example, President Jimmy Carter criticized the Southern Baptist Convention for not accepting Mormons as Christians in 1997: 

"Too many leaders now, I think, in the Southern Baptist Convention and in other conventions, are trying to act as the Pharisees did, who were condemned by Christ, in trying to define who can and who cannot be considered an acceptable person in the eyes of God. In other words, they’re making judgments on behalf of God. I think that’s wrong." Carter testified that "the people in my own local church have no interest in trying to condemn Mormons or trying to convert Mormons to be good old Baptists like me." Carter criticized SBC leaders for becoming "narrow in their definition of what is a proper Christian" and for believing "that every verse in the Bible has to be interpreted literally."

During the 2008 Presidential elections, people of different faiths stepped forward to rebut the claim that Mormons aren't Christians. For example, the Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister is part of the National Clergy Council, issued a statement to Reverend Al Sharpton during the 2008 Presidential election because Mr. Sharpton made some disparaging comments about the LDS faith:

The Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister who heads the National Clergy Council, issued a statement calling on Sharpton to “immediately apologize to Mr. Romney and the good people of the LDS Church and repent before God for such sinful hubris.”

Schenck, who has met privately with Romney to talk about Mormonism, also said that “while many other Christian groups may have differences with LDS doctrine, to question someone else’s sincerity of belief in God is the height of pharisaical arrogance.”

Another example is Mr. Bill Donohue, President of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, during the 2008 Presidential election, had this to say about candidates who attempt to use religion to either scare voters away from other candidates or to get support from voters:

"You know what, sell yourself on your issues, not on what your religion is."

Finally, Joel Osteen, a world famous Pastor, had this to say about Mitt Romney during the 2008 Presidential election: 

Joel Osteen also made some positive comments about Mitt Romney's faith in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox New. His comments come at around the 1:35 mark if you want to go straight to his statement: 

Michael Medved Discusses Pastor Robert Jeffress' "Mormons Are A Cult" Comments

Micheal Medved, a well known Jewish radio talk show host, gives a well thought out explanation why Robert Jeffress' comment that Mormons are a cult is wrong. Listen to the YouTube clip below: 

2012 Candidates Blast Pastor Jeffress' "Mormonism Is A Cult" Comment

While the 2012 candidates disagree with each other on various political issues, they are all united on one thing: Pastor Jeffress was wrong to call the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a cult:

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, a presidential candidate who performed strongly at the Values Voter summit, said he does not believe Mormonism is a cult, and believes Romney is a Christian.

"I'm not an expert on Mormonism, but every Mormon I know is a good and decent person ... by and large, except for Harry Reid," Santorum said on "Fox News Sunday," jabbing at the Senate Democratic leader.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said someone's specific religion has no place in the conversation.

"I think that none of us should sit in judgment on somebody's else's religion and I thought it was very unwise and very inappropriate," he said, adding that he thinks Mormons are Christians.

Businessman Herman Cain, who appeared with Gingrich on CBS' "Face the Nation," was a little more circumspect.

"I believe that they believe they're Christians," Cain said of Mormons. He added that the candidates are running to be "theologian-in-chief."

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., told CNN that the issue is about religious tolerance, not someone's faith.

"To make this a big issue is ridiculous right now, because every day I'm on the street talking to people. This is not what people are talking about," she said.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who won the Values Voter straw poll, told Fox News that he disagrees with Jeffress and the comment was "unnecessary."

“But I don't think that's the issue of the day," he said. "I think liberty is the issue of the day. Our Constitution is the issue of the day. And too much government -- that is the issue of the day. It's not the definition of a cult."

Another 2012 candidate, Rick Santorum has previously stated that Mitt Romney and John Huntsman's faith will not be an issue in this election.  Jim DeMint has also publicly echoed that same idea earlier this year. Furthermore, influential Christians like Pat Robertson and Joel Osteen have accepted the fact that Mitt Romney is a Christian.

Attacking Mitt Romney's faith is an old 2008 campaign trick that won't happen again. Voters have already gone through this issue before and they're not interested in going through it again. Additionally, Americans are becoming less tolerant of candidates who are willing to use an opponent's faith for political gain. American has always been a religiously diverse nation and it will continue to be in the future. 

All of the 2012 candidates, except Rick Perry,  recognize this fact and that is why they have blasted Pastor Robert Jeffress for his comments.

A Debate Worth Watching: Jay Sekulow vs. Pastor Robert Jeffress

Given that Rick Perry has decided to employ a passive aggressive attack against Mitt Romney's faith by having controversial Pastor Robert Jeffress of the Dallas First Baptist Church introduce the Texas governor at the Value Voter Summit, it is worth traveling back in time to watch a debate between a well known conservative attorney named Jay Sekulow and Pastor Robert Jeffress. 

I'm going to post the entire debate because the exchange is the best debate I've seen on the important question of whether or not a candidate's theology is more important than the values they promote. This debate took place sometime around December 2008.

In the first clip, Mark DeMoss, president of the DeMoss Group, opened the debate by giving his introductory remarks and discusses why he, as Christian, decided to endorse Mitt Romney in the 2008 Presidential election: 

The next clip is currently making the rounds on the Internet on various media sites and conservative blogs. After Mark DeMoss gives his introductory remarks, Pastor Jeffress steps up to make the case why Christians must always vote for a Christian candidate even if the non-Christian candidate is a very moral and conservative candidate.

What is even more interesting is that Pastor Jeffress asks the audience to travel forward in time to January of 2012 and imagine a hypothetical match up between Mitt Romney and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who  Pastor Jeffress describes her as being a “professing Christian whose views do not completely mesh with what Evangelicals believe.” According to Pastor Robert Jeffress, voters must chose Christians over non-Christians regardless if the non Christian candidate is more moral than the Christian candidate.

Pastor Jeffress' scenario has become a reality in which Mitt Romney is up against another Texas politician named Rick Perry in this election.  Watch the clip below and listen to Pastor Jeffress try to make a rational argument that Christians cannot vote for someone like Mitt Romney.:

After Pastor Jeffress makes his case for why Christians cannot vote for an "unbeliever" like Mitt Romney, Jay Sekulow, a high powered conservative Jewish leader, demonstrates why Pastor Jeffress positions is dangerous and leads to some very disturbing outcomes if you follow the Pastor's argument to its logical conclusion by posing a hypothetical to Pastor Jeffress: ”If Mitt Romney was running against Jimmy Carter, would you support Jimmy Carter because he’s a born-again Christian? I find that premise to be troubling.”

Jay Sekulow makes some other powerful points and I'll let you watch the clip to discover them on your own:

I cannot find an embeddable video for Pastor Robert Jeffress's rebuttal to Jay Sekulow but in this video, he admits that if he was faced with voting for either Romney or Obama in the 2012 election, he would reluctantly vote for Mitt Romney because Obama's comments and positions run against the Bible. The Pastor, in this video, then asks Jay Sekulow if he would be willing to vote for a Muslim candidate who wants to impose Sharia law to which Mr. Sekulow responds.

Again, I cannot find an embeddable videos for the Question and Answer session that followed. However, you can watch the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, ninth, tenth and eleventh videos. Pastor Jeffress' responses to various questions is almost as eye opening as his opening statement in his debate against Jay Sekulow. 

Watching the debate and the following A&A session takes some time but I really think its worth watching in its entirety. 

Rick Perry Using Passive Aggressive Strategy Against Mitt Romney's Faith

Rick Perry made headlines yesterday when the controversial Pastor Robert Jeffress of the Dallas First Baptist Church introduced and endorsed Govenor Perry at the Values Voter Summit. You can watch the Pastor's remarks below:

The reason why this introduction was remarkable is because Pastor Robert Jeffress is well known for his repeated statements about Mitt Romney as a non-Christian who is a member of a cult and therefore is not qualified to become President of the United States. He has gone around the nation telling people that Christians cannot vote for a candidate who belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and that any one who does vote for a Mormon will have jeopardized their salvation.

Pastor Robert Jeffress was more direct and more explicit in his comments towards Mitt Romney's faith in his statement to the press immediately after he gave his introductory speech at the Value Voters Summit:

The implication became explicit shortly after Perry’s speech, when Jeffress spoke to a group of reporters outside the ballroom. When one asked whether he had in fact been referring to Romney and Mormonism, Jeffress said he had. “Mormonism is a cult,” he said cheerfully, before rephrasing his onstage statement in a more explicit way: The choice, he said, is between a born again Christian and “a good moral person who is part of a cult.”

Jeffress said that he hadn’t discussed his opinion about Mormonism with Rick Perry, and didn’t purport to represent the governor’s views. (He did say that Perry had “welcomed” his endorsement.) He added that his view shouldn’t be surprising, given that the Southern Baptist Convention has “officially labeled Mormonism as a cult.” What’s more, a little Googling shows that this is by no means the first time Jeffress has expressed this view or talked about how it applies to Mitt Romney. Which suggests that Perry may have–or should have–known what to expect from his opening act this afternoon.

Rick Perry is attempting to use Mike Huckabee's strategy of playing passive aggressive on Mitt Romney's faith because they were given two weeks prior notice that Pastor Robert Jeffress was going to introduce him at the Value Voters Summit and yet the Perry campaign made no objections to having the Pastor as the introductory speaker:

Meanwhile, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which helped organize the event, said on CNN's "John King, USA" that his group gave Perry a heads up approximately two weeks ago that Jeffress would be introducing the governor.

"We sent it to the campaign. They signed off on it," Perkins said. "I don't think there was any other communication beyond that. The campaign did not know what he would say. We did not know what he would say."

Passive aggressive behavior is when someone does something and then denies the very act that they just did. Thus, it becomes difficult to pin down the bad behavior on the person.  Here, it is impossible to believe that Rick Perry nor the people who organized this event knew that he would be speaking at the event and yet they they claim they had no idea what he would say at the event like this. This is a classic passive aggressive behavior on the part of the Rick Perry campaign.

It is inconceivable that Rick Perry's campaign would sign off on having someone like Pastor Jefress introduce Governor Perry at an extremely important event without knowing who that person is, what their positions are and what their reputation is in the public eye. A professional campaign team will always do their background research. Conducting this kind of research isn't that hard to do since any one can Google the Pastor's position regarding Christians supporting a Mormon candidate. However, such research wouldn't be necessary since the Pastor was very vocal in the 2008 Presidential elections about Mitt Romney.

It would be campaign malpractice to blindly allow someone to introduce someone without knowing what they would say before hand. More likely than not, the Perry campaign must have previewed an advanced copy of the speech before letting the Pastor step up to the podium.

The claim that they had no idea what kind of remarks Pastor Jeffress would make becomes even more incredulous given that Rick Perry is the Govenor of Texas and that Pastor Robert Jefrress is well known religious figure in Texas as well as across the country. 

Rick Perry continues to employ this strategy even after the Pastor's statement at the Value Voters Summit when he accepted the controversial Pastor's endorsement yet claims to disagree with Robert Jeffress' claims about Mormonism being a cult when asked about it by the press:

"No. I don't think it is," Perry said when asked by a reporter if he believes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a cult. Perry was also asked if he associated himself with Jeffress' comments.

Though the Texas governor disagreed with Jeffress' words, he did not outright denounce them. Reporters attempted to ask Perry more questions, but were unsuccessful. Instead, Perry was ushered out with his wife, Anita Perry, and his campaign staff.

Rick Perry's passive agressive strategy is even more obvious in this ABC News article:

The campaign’s official comment on Jeffress evolved quickly on Friday afternoon. When initially asked by ABC News whether Gov. Perry agreed that Mormonism is a cult, Perry spokesman Mark Miner said: “The governor doesn’t judge what is in the heart and soul of others. He leaves that to God.”

Miner would also not immediately say whether the governor believed it was wrong to call Mormonism a cult. ”It’s not his decision to judge that,” the spokesman said. He added that conference organizers decided who should introduce Perry at the summit, not the campaign.

But minutes later, Miner called ABC News with a new statement: “He does not believe it is a cult.”

Rather than distance himself from the pastor’s introductory remarks on Friday, when Perry took the podium, he thanked Jeffress for a “very powerful introduction.”

Perry added, “He knocked it out of the park.”

Once again, this is classic passive-aggressive behavior. Rick Perry won't denounce the Pastor's comments but he merely disagrees yet he thinks his speech knocked it out of the ballpark. This kind of confusing and convoluted response is something that shouldn't sit well with the American voter. 

Given all the facts above, it becomes difficult, perhaps impossible, to accept Rick Perry's claim that they were unaware of Pastor Robert Jeffress before allowing him to make the introductions at the Value Voters Summit. Moreover, Rick Perry's disagreement Pastor Jeffress over whether or not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a cult religion rings hollow since he was given advanced warning of his endorsement and yet he didn't voice his disagreement before or after. He stated that he disagreed with Pastor Perry only after being asked about it by the media. 

Had the media not asked Rick Perry about Robert Jeffress' positions towards Mormons, how long do you think it would have been before Rick Perry publicly disagreed with Mr. Jeffress?

Playing passive-aggressive towards Mitt Romney's faith was a strategy that worked once but cannot work again. Mike Huckabee was the first to use this tactic and it was successful during the 2008 Presidential election. Tim Pawlenty attempted to use it in his campaign and it fizzled. President Obama stated that he would use Mitt Romney's faith against the former Governor in the 2012 election if Romney is the GOP nominee and got severely mocked for it by Steven Colbert.

Now Rick Perry is trying to use this strategy and it will fail.

Why? Because people are now aware of this strategy.  For example, Max Twain of Race42012 summarized Perry's strategy with a simple line: Mormon card officially played. The more people properly identify or label what is being done and get other people's attention to what is being done, the power of that strategy or tactic is greatly diluted. That is what is happening here. People in the media and conservative bloggers can see what Perry is doing here and they are correctly calling it out for what it is.

It will also fail because more and more people are willing to look beyond a candidate's faith and are starting to realize that a candidate's values is more important than the religion they belong to. Moreover, politicians like Rick Santorum and Jim DeMint have publicly stated that Mitt Romney's faith will not be an issue in the 2012 election. Furthermore, influential Christians like Pat Robertson and Joel Osteen have accepted the fact that Mitt Romney is a Christian. 

Conservatives should never allow any Republican or Democrat to use religion to cause divisions among us, stir up feelings of bigotry and score votes. Rick Perry has done all three and as a result, he has disqualified himself to be President of the United States.