This month, Ann Romney tried a different tack, taking a lighthearted
jab at her husband's main Republican competitors, Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz., and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as she
introduced Romney at a Missouri GOP dinner.
The biggest difference between her husband and the other candidates,
Ann Romney said, is that "he's had only one wife."
McCain has been married twice; Giuliani three times.
The Romney campaign had no comment for this story.
From The Associated Press, 2/24/07:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,254362,00.html
Polygamy Prominent in GOP Presidential Hopeful Mitt Romney's Family
Tree
SALT LAKE CITY —
While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his
Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's
great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great
grandfathers had 12.
Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element
in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to
become the first Mormon president.
Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife
in 1897.
That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and
more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.
Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of
polygamists.
She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the
floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple
marriages.
Romney's great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt, an apostle in the
church, had 12 wives.
In an 1852 sermon, Parley Pratt's brother and fellow apostle, Orson
Pratt, became the first church official to publicly proclaim and
defend polygamy as a direct revelation from God.
Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in
Chihuahua, Mexico, where Mormons fled in the 1800s to escape religious
persecution and U.S. laws forbidding polygamy.
He and his family did not return to the United States until 1912, more
than two decades after the church issued "The Manifesto" banning
polygamy.
"When you read the family's history, you realize how important
polygamy was to them," said Todd Compton, a Mormon and independent
historian who wrote a book about the polygamous life of the church's
founder, Joseph Smith.
_____________________________________________________
Cheaper by the dozen.
Harry
.
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