Romney's Mexico-Born Father Faced Own 'Birther' Attacks - GG'Dad Fled U.S. To Mexico Over Polygamy
from the Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-campaign-romney-birth-certificatebre84s1gf-20120529,0,5483593.story
____ Back then, George Romney - who died in 1995 - was a moderate who was challenging eventual President Richard Nixon in the Republican primaries.
Records in a George Romney archive at the University of Michigan describe how questions about his eligibility to be president surfaced almost as soon as he began his short-lived campaign.
As early as February 1967 - a year before the first 1968 presidential primary - some newspapers were raising questions as to whether George Romney's place of birth (born in Mexico) disqualified him from the presidency.
By May 1967, U.S. congressman Emmanuel Celler, a Democrat who chaired the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, was expressing "serious doubts" about George Romney's eligibility.
The next month, another Democratic congressman inserted a lengthy treatise into the Congressional Record in which a government lawyer - writing in a "personal capacity" - argued that George Romney was ineligible for the White House because he was born outside U.S. territory . . .
read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-campaign-romney-birth-certificatebre84s1gf-20120529,0,5483593.story
Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, was born into a polygamist colony in Mexico.
Romney's great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, fled to Mexico after the 1882 passing of the Edmund Act, which banned polygamy in the US. He married his fifth wife after the Mormon church formally banned the practice in 1890
The Romneys were some of the first Mormons to settle in the border state of Chihuahua, according to the AP. But, when the Mexican Revolution hit Chihuahua in 1912, the Romneys, including Mitt's father, who was 5, fled back into the US . . .
After the revolution, Mitt's grandfather, Gaskell Romney, remained in the US with his five children, but his brother, Miles Archibold Romney, returned to Mexico.
Today, the 40 Mexican Romneys live in solid brick homes in Colonia Juarez, some 190 miles from El Paso, Texas. According to the Daily Mail, the Mormons of northern Mexico don't practice polygamy, as the Mormon church officially banned the practice in 1890.
"It is a very open community, where we have been progressive, and we have shaped a life for ourselves, our children, that we think is a healthy life," Leighton Romney told the AP.
read: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/120131/mitt-romneys-great-grandfather-fled-mexico-pract
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