REPORTER: Governor, there is a report today that a businessman says that a closed fundraiser in Vegas a couple weeks ago, he asked you a question about having an Islamic person in your cabinet and you said that based on the population of Muslims in the United States that you don't think it would be justified?
GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: No. His question was did I need to have a Muslim in my Cabinet to be able to confront radical Jihad and would it be important to have a Muslim in my Cabinet and I said, 'No, I don't think that you have to have a Muslim in the Cabinet to be able to take on radical Jihad anymore than during the Second World War we needed to have a Japanese-American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan or something of that nature.' I just rejected that argument number one, and then number two, I point out that people who would be part of my Cabinet is something that I really haven't given a lot of thought to at this point, but I don't have boxes that I check off as to their ethnicity. It's not that I have to have a certain number of each different ethnic group; instead I would choose people based upon their merits and their capabilities.
REPORTER: So you would be open to having a Muslim person….
GOV. ROMNEY: I'm open to having people of any faith and ethnic group, but they would be selected based upon their capacity and their capabilities and the values and skills that they could bring to the administration. But I don't choose people based upon checking off a box.
MSNBC's First Read has a write up if you'd like a link: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/27/482645.aspx
Additionally, Andy McCarthy at The Corner has interesting and relevant comments on Mr. Ijaz.
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