Take a gander at this great, concise article by Nate Oman.
Here are the key graphs:
In 1902, Utah elected Reed Smoot to be its U.S. senator. Unlike Romney, who temporarily occupied positions of local church leadership in Boston, Smoot was a Mormon apostle, a life-long member of the church’s second-highest governing council. Activists and journalists insisted that Mormon theocracy was again rearing its head and that Smoot would take political orders from church leaders.
The result was a four-year congressional investigation of Mormonism. Ultimately, church President Joseph F. Smith appeared before the Senate. He disclaimed any theocratic agenda; he insisted that Mormons were loyal citizens of the U.S., and he pledged that the church would not direct or seek to dominate Mormons elected to political office.
We now have more than a century of experience with that pledge. While the church occasionally acts politically — as do all American denominations — it has abided by Smith’s promise. Robert Bennett, for example, a former three-term Republican senator from Utah and a practicing Mormon, insists that in 18 years in office, church leaders never instructed him on how to vote on a single issue. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate and a Mormon, says the same thing.
Prior to the Vatican II council of the 1960s, the Catholic Church was formally opposed to many of the core features of liberal democracy, such as religious freedom. Given historical experience, however, it’s ridiculous to imagine a believing Catholic like Joe Biden as part of a subversive Roman agenda.
Seeing Romney’s candidacy as a Mormon plot is equally outlandish. We now have twice as much experience with post-Smoot Mormonism as we have with post-Vatican II Catholicism
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/mormon-plot-wasn-t-article-1.1014874#ixzz1l9U2cd3u