The Udalls Break the Mormon Stereotype

In connection with my series of posts on Mormonism, the following information seems relevant. From today's news:


One of the Mormon Udalls, Senator Mark Udall of Colorado



A bipartisan group of senators is calling on President Obama to accelerate the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan, arguing that the timetable the administration has laid out is not rapid enough as the nation grapples with its own economic problems at home.

The resolution says Obama should "expedite the transition of the responsibility for military and security operations to the Government of Afghanistan," in addition to "expediting the drawdown of United States combat troops in Afghanistan and accelerating the transfer of security authority to Afghan authorities prior to December 2014."

The amendment has bipartisan support; it's backed by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Something sounded familiar here, so I looked up Tom Udall on Wikipedia and found this:

Tom Udall's family can be traced to territorial New Mexico, and he was born in Tucson, Arizona. He attended Prescott College, graduating with a pre-law degree in 1970. In 1975, he graduated from Cambridge University in England with a Bachelor of Law degree....He is the son of Stewart Udall, who was Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, nephew of Arizona Congressman Morris Udall, and first cousin of Colorado Senator Mark Udall, double second cousin of former Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, and second cousin of Utah Senator Mike Lee. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

So, talk about diversity. Here you have three Democratic and two Republican Senators calling for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Religiously, two are Lutherans (Brown and Merkley), one is Presbyterian (Paul), and two are Mormons (Udall and Lee, who are, as it says above, second cousins).

Another blow to the stereotype of Mormons being mindless, knee-jerk, super-hawkish conservatives.

However, they do clearly own the West!  (Tom Udall's cousin Mark Udall is the Senator from next-door Colorado--geesh!)  I say, let's just turn the country over the Westerners. They seem to have their bipartisan act together.