"I just think there is something a little hypocritical to say as an evangelical, I can’t support this guy because he is Mormon."

The latest Article VI Blog Interview is with Mark DeMoss, probably the leading figure in the Romney for President campaign's outreach efforts to conservative Christians.  

Mark founded The DeMoss Group, an Atlanta-based public relations firm, in 1991.  The firm describes itself as specializing in serving Christian organizations and causes and as the largest such agency in the country.  Their clients include:The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Samaritan’s Purse & Franklin Graham; Prison Fellowship and Chuck Colson; Campus Crusade for Christ; Focus on the Family; Bishop TD Jakes; American Center for Law & Justice; and Teen Mania.

Prior to starting the firm Mark served as chief-of-staff and spokesperson for Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Virginia for 8 years, a period which included the height of popularity of the Moral Majority. The DeMoss Group has worked closely with more than 100 faith-based organizations in the past 16 years and Mark has provided strategic communications counsel to dozens of religious leaders during that time. In March 2007, Thomas Nelson publishers released Mark’s first book, The Little Red Book of Wisdom.  Mark describes the book, already in its third printing, as "presenting wisdom for your professional life and wisdom for your personal life."

Mark has assisted the Romney campaign, as a volunteer, since the fall of 2006.

The interview took place on April 27, 2007. 

______________________________________________ 

JS:    Well, it’s early morning here in Southern California and mid-morning in Atlanta, and we are here with Mark DeMoss.  Mark is the founder of The DeMoss Group, which is an evangelically-oriented public relations firm; and Mark is certainly one of the most well known and influential evangelicals in the country.  Mark, you have a book out, less than a month now, I believe, called The Little Red Book of Wisdom, which I haven’t had a chance to read, but it sure does look great.  What caused you to write this?

MD:    Well, I have been fascinated by the topic of wisdom most of my life.  I have been fortunate to spend most of my life around wise people and I felt like most people feel like, they somehow think wisdom is reserved for the best educated and the highest paid and the most powerful people in our society.  I think that is a shame.  I think wisdom is available to me and to my children and everybody and so I wrote a little book, it’s 23 short chapters that I divided into two sections:  wisdom for your professional life and wisdom for your personal life.  It is full of stories and principles that I have gleaned from other wise people, from the book of Proverbs, in the Old Testament, which I consider the textbook on wisdom, and from my experiences in public relations and working with leaders of a lot of great organizations.  I am excited about it.  I have gotten a good response to it.  It is my first book and we will see where it goes.

JS:    Hard work, isn’t it?

MD:    It is hard work, but it is worth it, especially when you see it on as shelf and you get letters from people telling you how it impacted them and that they have gotten copies to pass on to other people.  It is very rewarding.  

JS:    Now, just because I’m interested, Mark, I’m old enough to remember Chairman Mao, are you making any references to him in your title?

MD:    Not really, although, as a golfer, there is another little red book that golfers are fond of, by Harvey Penett.  So, there are a few other little red books out there.  But I have not read Chairman Mao’s red book.  Maybe it was the original little red book, I don’t know.

JS:    I don’t know either.  I did not know about the golfing red book.  I’m afraid I am not ingrained in that sport.  So, I really loved some of the chapter titles, they are — you have one about wisdom, or is it integrity is costly?

MD:    Honesty Can Be Costly.

JS:    That’s right.  Is that one of your personal experience things or did you get that from somebody else?

MD:    That’s really a business principle of ours here.  Unfortunately, the public relations industry is known more for spin and hype than it is for honesty and truth telling, perhaps.  And I don’t like that.  But, I believe in telling the truth even if it costs us business.  And it often does.  By that I mean that if we tell a client or a potential client what we believe to be true, not what they want to hear, necessarily, sometimes people decide they don’t want to hire that kind of counsel.  And that is just fine with me.

JS:    Well, thinking of telling the truth, you had a piece appear in Politico this week, dated April 24, about why evangelicals could support Mitt Romney, which certainly Lowell and I think is a lot of truth.  Before we dive into the contents of the article, just a couple of questions about the circumstances surrounding the article.  It has drawn a lot of comments as internet posted articles do.  Have you paid any attention to those comments and do you have any reaction to them?

MD:    I read through them for the first time last night actually.

JS:    Any reaction to them?  I haven’t had a chance to get through them in detail.

MD:    Not really, and I don’t know that I read through all of them.  I read through probably eight or ten of them and people go off on different tangents and ironically, or maybe it’s not ironic, maybe that’s how it works, but after the first of second posting, most of the commentary is on the postings rather than the article that I wrote.  So the people posting and commenting actually begin debating each other rather than me.  But that is fine too.  I don’t know if I have read them all.

JS:    Well, that tends to be how it works.  In my experience in these circumstances that is where we end up – it’s actually kind of amazing.  I think it is something to which my LDS friend Lowell here has become rather bemused, but this is hardly the first time we have seen a bunch of creedal Christian people break down into an argument over what Mormons believed.

MD:    Right.

JS:    Instead of just asking the Mormons what they believe.  The other curious circumstance surrounding your article, Mark, the same day, Politico published, a rather odious piece by Gary South.  Did you see it?

MD:    I saw the title there, I have not opened it and read it to be honest with you.

JS:    Was there any discussion with you and Politico that they felt like they had to publish some sort of piece to balance yourself, or anything like that?

MD:    No.  We never had that discussion.  And I don’t object to them doing that.  I think they have the prerogative to do that.  But no, its not that I don’t want to read it.  Of course I want to read it.  But the last couple of days have been busy enough that I haven’t read it.  But I want to read everything I can on the subject.

JS:    I’m asking because your piece is rather exceptionally well done.  South’s piece is not.  It is just a cheep shot is all it is.  Which is something, by the way, that Mr. South is known for.  At least in California politics.  So, one of the questions Lowell and I have asked ourselves is why would Politico publish something like that?

MD:    I think this has really become a passion of mine of late, and that is, what got me interested in this particular man to begin with was this conventional wisdom that actually a national religion reporter posed to me, a hear and a half ago and that was in the form of a question:  Did I think evangelicals could ever support a Mormon?  Or did I think a candidate’s being Mormon would automatically disqualify him from considerations by evangelicals? 

And that really bothered me.  That whole mindset troubled me.  So I began to look into Mitt Romney and his life and his record and everything I could find out about him.  And I finally reached this conclusion, and that was, to ask whether I could support a Mormon is the wrong question.  I think the question should be: Could I support this Mormon, this particular Mormon. 

I happen to be a Southern Baptist.  If you ask me if I could support a Southern Baptist for President, I would say it depends on who the Southern Baptist is.  There are a lot of Southern Baptists I couldn’t, and have not, supported.  In fact, probably the three most prominent political figures who have been Southern Baptists in my life time have been Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter.  I wouldn’t have supported any of those candidates for president.  

And I think we should apply this question to a Mormon or a Catholic or a Methodist or an atheist or anybody and that is, — to say, to make an evaluation based solely on a person’s faith, I believe, does a terrible disservice both to the person and to the faith.  It is an insufficient evaluation and I wouldn’t want, for example, anyone in this country to say, well, I could never support an evangelical, those people are crazy.  And there are a lot of evangelicals that might earn us that reputation.  But I don’t want to be judged by that standard.  I want to be judged on my life and my record and my career and my family and my values.  So that is how I sort of came to this table.

JS:    Now, you talk about, you open the article by talking about a meeting that you set up between Governor Romney and thirteen evangelical leaders.  Is the — or a dozen evangelical leaders I should say — is that list of leaders something that is public?  Or do you wish to keep that quiet?

MD:    No, I can tell you most of the people that were in that meeting, and can I give you the background to that meeting, though?

JS:    Please, by all means.

LB:    Yes, please.  We were going to ask about that.

MD:    OK, because it sets it in context I think.  I was talking with a friend who is more politically involved than I am, last summer.  We were talking about everything you and I have just been talking about and I said, “You know, if everything I see and read about Mitt Romney is accurate, I’d like to meet this guy.”  And my friend said, “Well, I’ll set it up.”  I didn’t know if he could set it up.  I didn’t know if he had the ability to set it up but I said ok.

And a month or two later, I got a call from the Governor’s office saying they would like to schedule a meeting.  So, I went to Boston on September 11 last year, 2006, and had a meeting with Gov. Romney — my first introduction to him.  And my friend and I and one staff member, Peter Flaherty, and the Governor sat in the Governor’s office for about an hour and a quarter and I told him what I have told you guys, which is I didn’t think this conventional wisdom was right, nor did I think it should be, that he would be dismissed from consideration because he is a Mormon.  

And then I told him two things.  I said, “I’d like to help you.  I’m not a political consultant but I do know this evangelical world pretty well.  So, I would like to help you.  And secondly, I am not for hire.  You can’t pay me.  Now or ever.”  And that was a beginning of a friendship and a respect that we have for each other now.  And out of that meeting, in response to my offer to help, he asked, “Well, what kinds of things can you do to help?”

I said, “Well, I would like to first bring a group of evangelical leaders to meet with you for a couple of hours like we have today.  Let them ask you questions.”  He offered to let us do that in his home.  And that then set up this meeting in October, about a month later, that I begin [my Politico] column talking about.  

So, I invited — I sent letters to about 45 evangelical leaders.  [The Romneys] told me that in their home — we could have done it in a hotel and had a larger group, but they said, I thought it would be nice to do it in their home and have a little more intimate conversation.  So, they could only comfortably accommodate 15 or so people.  Interestingly, Massachusetts is one of our few states with no Governor’s Mansion.  So this was their personal home. I sent out about 45 letters trying to get 15 people to fly to Boston and meet the Romneys.  And that is about exactly the response that we got.

At that meeting was Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, a former presidential candidate himself, Jay Sekulow from the American Center for Law and Justice, Franklin Graham was there, and Paula White, who is a Pentecostal pastor and author from Florida, was there.  A couple of Southern Baptist pastors were there, one was Richard Lee from Atlanta, another was Jerry Prevo from Anchorage, Alaska, and I think Lou Shelton was there.  The President of Concerned Women for America was there.  Those kinds of people.  I don’t know how many that is.  

But what we did in the Governor’s home was really amazing.  We got a plate of food in the kitchen, went and sat in his den in a big circle, and for three hours we talked, asked him questions.  He invited people to ask him any question they wanted.  Nothing was off limits.  

And I thought that the most interesting thing was, I had anticipated that there would be a real concentrated discussion about his faith and about what he believed theologically.  Instead, only two people, there were only two questions in the three hours, about what he believed theologically, about God and Jesus, or how you go to heaven.  Only two questions.  The other questions covered everything you would ask anybody else who was running for President. 

In fact, several people in the room began like this, they said, “Governor, I don’t have a problem with the Mormon issue, but I want to ask you about immigration or about dealing with Radical Islam, or about abortion or tell us how you arrived at your views on stem cell research, and marriage, and they were the issues of the day.”  That’s what we talked about.

JS:    As someone who has their finger pretty well on the pulse of the evangelical world, would you say that was, that would be reflective of evangelicalism generally?  Or do you think that was because you had some exceptional people in the meeting?

MD:    I want to be careful not to, and I have not done this, to extrapolate from that meeting and translate it to the evangelical population as a whole.  I do think there is some difference in approach to this, between an evangelical leader or a pastor, and the average evangelical lay person; and just because some leaders have analyzed this and are personally comfortable, let’s say, with Mitt Romney as a candidate, doesn’t necessarily mean, or doesn’t automatically mean that their constituents will have arrived at that point.  I think it will take a lot of time. 

And I hear this from pastors.  I was with a very prominent Southern Baptist pastor a few weeks ago in the southwest and he said,  “You know, I’m comfortable with this” — he’s met the Governor, he’s been in a small meeting with him — he said, “I’m comfortable with this, but I don’t know about my mother and the people that sit in my pews on Sundays.  It is going to take some time.”

Well, the good news as far as I‘m concerned is, time is one thing we have.  We’ve got a lot of time.  And I think if there is anything good, and there is probably not much good, but if there is anything good about this elongated presidential election cycle now, that started so early, I think it is that people will increasingly grow comfortable with Mitt Romney.

JS:    Is there a sort of bullet point set of messages that you think evangelical leaders should be giving to those people in the pews and others who might be having this trouble?

MD:    I think there are a number of them.  One would be, and this may be at the top of the list:  That it is more important, in my view, that a candidate shares my values than it is that they share my faith or my theology.  Number one.  

Secondly, I would say that in terms of values and, you know evangelicals like to talk about values, you hear the term now “values voters.”  If we’re going to talk about values I would say, emphatically, in terms of values an evangelical has more in common with most Mormons than they do with a liberal Southern Baptist or Methodist or Catholic or Episcopalian or Lutheran or– fill in the blank.  I think that is a really important point.  

And then, thirdly, I would say this:  Too often I think evangelicals have approached a national election in this way.  We have said, let’s go find the person who is the most clearly Christian, or most clearly evangelical candidate, the most like us in every way, and try to get them elected.  The problem I have with that mindset is that it gives almost a disregard for competence and other qualifications.  And so, I’ve got lots of — a lady called me last night from California and said, she had read my book and tracked me down, and said, how are we going to get a Christian elected in ’08?  We have to do this.  You have to help us.  

I think that is the wrong approach, because I don’t just want a Christian in this office, in the Oval Office.  I want somebody who has run and managed big things, with big budgets, with lots of people, with complex problems, and who has shown leadership ability and on and on.  And even the Washington Post, in an editorial, not an Op-Ed, the Post editorial, the week that Romney announced officially, they suggested in their editorial that while they didn’t agree with all of his positions, that his experience, his management experience and skills, set him apart from the rest of the field.

I think that is a huge point.  This man, arguably, is the best rounded, most qualified person to ever run in President in my lifetime.  And I say that for this reason, you could suggest that people like Ross Perot and Steve Forbes certainly had the business experience that Romney has, but neither of them had governing experience. 

So, if you combine Romney’s business experience at Bain Capital, his leadership and management experience with the Salt Lake Olympics, and his governing experience as a Governor of a state with an opposition majority party, I don’t think anybody can even mention a candidate that has ever run that has those three components like Mitt Romney does.  So, I think that’s an important point. 

We are — if I had a religious litmus test for candidates, Governor Mike Huckabee would be my candidate.  I wouldn’t look anywhere else.  I think he’s the guy.  But I don’t have that litmus test.  I think that is an absurd test to put forward for who we want to lead us.

JS:    A couple of notable evangelical leaders, well, one has disagreed with you would be Al Mohler, who is quoted in Hugh Hewitt’s book.  Have you had an opportunity to read that yet?

MD:    I’ve read the whole book.  I think it is a fabulous book.

JS:    So do we, but then I think all three of us are in it.  Mohler’s contention is essentially that the election of an LDS President would aid LDS evangelical efforts in, and Mohler makes the point, not so much in the United States, but elsewhere in the world.  And he feels therefore that souls would be lost.  And I am wondering if you have a response to that argument?

LB:    But before you answer, Mark, I really have to jump in because that is an interesting issue to me.  I have thought about what Al Mohler said, quite a bit.  He has made the argument, as John just said, that there is a legitimate theological basis for evangelicals to be concerned about voting for a Mormon presidential candidate.  He said that he would “agonize” over voting for a Mormon as a matter of what he called “Christian discipleship” because, as John said, electing a Mormon President would tend to “mainstream” Mormonism, and so some people might accept that faith and essentially be deceived, at least in theological terms.  So, we’d like to hear you respond to that.

MD:    First of all, I think that very question and concern is probably — if it’s not the biggest and most wide spread concern among evangelicals it is in the top 2 or 3.  And I will say for me personally, it was really the only hurdle I had to jump personally in deciding to support Mitt Romney.

Here’s how I jumped it, and I have got enormous respect for Dr. Mohler.  He is a brilliant, brilliant man and thinker and theologian.  And I would not want to debate him anywhere.  But here is how I would handle this particular question.  I approached it this way.  If being elected President would further the cause of Mormonism as a religion, then, at least in a scalable context, there should be evidence that it happened in the State of Massachusetts, when a Mormon governor was elected.  Now, you say that is not the same as being the leader of the free world.  And it is not.  But I would say that in four years in Massachusetts, if we are concerned that electing a Mormon President would advance Mormonism and advance their evangelization efforts, then there should be some evidence, some uptick, some evidence of something in Massachusetts.  And I explored that a little bit.  

The other concern I have heard a lot is that he would load his administrative team with LDS folks.  And so I explored these two questions with the Governor and interestingly, on the second point, about appointing Mormons to key positions, he could not name a single Mormon that he had appointed to any position in the state of Massachusetts in four years.  Now, he was quick to say “There probably are some, but I can’t tell you who they are.”  So, I thought, that’s a good sign.  He didn’t have a cabinet full of Mormons.  

Then, secondly, I think this: What is true of the White House should be true of other areas of life to some degree.  So, this man was a prominent business man, business leader.  Did that advance, is there any evidence that his rise to prominence in the business world advanced Mormonism in that sector?  I don’t think there is.  Is there any evidence that his running the Olympics gave him a platform which advanced Mormonism in civic life or in athletics?  I don’t think there is.  Is there any evidence that his being Governor advanced Mormonism in the State of Massachusetts?  Clearly, there is not.  So, I think, I am entirely comfortable with this whole question and I think you have to analyze it like that.  

People have said to me occasionally, Mark, you don’t understand what these people believe.  And my answer to that is, on a personal level, I care what Mitt Romney believes about Jesus and about heaven and about hell and so on.  On a political level, I don’t care.  And I am not trying to be smart-alecky about it, I just don’t care because I don’t think it is relevant. 

I do think it is important that he has a moral basis, which nobody would say he does not have.  I do think it is important that he has a personal faith, which nobody would say he does not have.  I don’t think it is important that he has a faith that mirrors mine.

JS:    Mark, one other question now.  I have heard that there have been other meetings with evangelical leaders.  Specifically I heard about one in South Carolina and I also believe there was one associated with the Religious Broadcasters Convention in Florida a few months ago.  Were you associated with either of those?

MD:    I was with the one in Orlando during the Religious Broadcasters Convention.  Jay Sekulow and I set that, it was actually a series of meetings in an afternoon, and in the span of a couple of hours, the Governor and his wife met with a very small group of five or six leaders and then a group of about 25 and then about a group of 140, and then another group of about 25.  And all of those meetings, I would say, went very much like the meeting in October in the Governor’s home went, in terms of what people were asking and the reaction to him.  I think, to a person, people come away from a meeting with the Romneys very favorably impressed with a belief and a conviction that he is a genuine person and a leader and he has convictions   They may still have some nagging questions about this whole faith question, but I think he makes ground every time he meets with anybody.

LB:    Let me ask you to just put on your public relations advisor hat for a moment and give us your thoughts on what you think is the next step after these meetings?  Is it to hope that these folks will spread the word to other evangelicals?

JS:    Let me insert a little bit because Lowell and I think too much alike; that was my next question.  Mark, I don’t know if you caught it on our blog, it may have been two weeks ago now, one of our readers suggested a little bit of research work that we did produced an absolutely startling set of statistics: 87% of all stories written about Governor Romney, using Google News as the search engine, mention his faith.  Mention the word Mormon, let’s be precise.  And that compares to 2% of stories written about Rudy Giuliani which mention his Catholicism and 0.02% of stories written about John McCain which mention his Episcopalianism.  That’s a pretty formidable public relations hill to climb.

MD:    It is.  There is no question about it.  That is why I am actually glad about this long campaign season, because I think it favors Romney above anybody else.  Because he is arguably the least known of the top tier candidates.  So, it is reasonable to suggest that we are not going to, the general public is not going to learn anything particularly new or enlightening about McCain or Giuliani in the next 12 months.  We can only add to our knowledge base about Romney in the next 12 months because most people know so little about him.  

I’m not overly — I’ll tell you what — and this is a very radical statement to make as an evangelical on this question, and I don’t know that I’ve said it anywhere else, but I’ll say it.  I have, personally, actually gone from being okay with the fact that he is Mormon to now, I actually LIKE the fact that he is a Mormon because relative to my other options right now, or the viable options, I take great comfort in the fact that his faith is so important to him and it is important enough that he has stayed with Ann, his wife, for 37 or 38 years.  It is important enough to him that his family is more important than anything else.  It is important enough to him that he lives by a certain code of behavior. 

And I am now actually glad that he is a Mormon because it says to me he’s not suddenly going to go out next month and embarrass us by some terrible behavior.  I have no concern about waking up one day and reading that he’s left his wife for another woman.  And that is because I know how important and grounded he is in Mormonism.  

Now, do I wish he was a born again evangelical Christian just like I was?  Sure I do.  Personally I do.  But politically, I don’t think so. 

And I will tell you another book that I think is, in an indirect way at least, a terrific book, and you guys may want to talk about it some time, and that is a book written by Jeff Benedict called The Mormon Way of Doing Business.  Have you seen that book?

JS:    I have it on my shelf.  I have not gotten to it yet.

MD:    I picked it up and read it in one weekend.  And I tell you what it does.  It doesn’t mention Mitt Romney, I don’t think.  His name might be in it.  But this author, who is an investigative journalist, basically profiled nine Mormon business leaders in America, none of whom I knew were Mormons.  So this was not more obvious Mormon business people like Bill Marriott, this was the Chairman of Dell Computers, the CEO of JetBlue, the former CEO of Madison Square Garden, the CFO of American Express, the Dean of the Harvard Business School, and it was nine very prominent business leaders, all of whom are Mormon. 

It sort of chronicled how their faith impacts their business life and their family life.  And I read that book and again, while I wish these men all had my theology, I have to tell you I greatly admired their business ethics, their family standards and commitments to their family, and the honoring of the Sabbath.  I mean, most evangelicals don’t uphold the Sabbath.  

So, I just think there is something a little hypocritical to say as an evangelical, I can’t support this guy because he is Mormon, so I’ll go support somebody else who may not even share my values, but at least, they’re not Mormon.  I think that is a really strange conclusion to reach, to put it nicely.

JS:    I think, to quit being an interviewer for a minute, I think it is something  that comes from personal experience or from ancient wisdom, if you will.  I had the unfortunate, at least with retrospect unfortunate, happenstance that my first election was the one that elected Jimmy Carter and I was a young ministry professional at the time working for Young Life, or getting ready to work for Young Life, I should say.  I was rather enamored with Carter’s willingness to speak about his faith and therefore, cast the worst vote of my life.  

LB:    True confessions now.

JS:    Well, I think I have confessed it on the blog before, Lowell, but I’m still embarrassed by it.  So, you know, I think that is something which is — one of the things that is exciting is, here’s a guy, Romney, who I can say, value-wise, is going to line up with me, on the things that meet up politically he is going to line up fairly close with me.  So I think that is very smart, Mark.  So, back to Lowell’s question on where does this go from here in terms of specific outreach to evangelicals, at least as far as Mark DeMoss is concerned?

MD:    Sorry, I forgot to actually answer that.  

JS:    That’s okay.  You said great things.

MD:    First of all, there is no magic wand for this equation.  The good news is, neither is there a magic wand for any of the other candidates.  So, we need time, which we have.  What I have tried to do is just challenge the thinking, challenge the conventional wisdom of evangelicals.  And I think we’ve begun to do that, just trip the general mind set a little bit and stir it up and get people to think about the things we have been talking about.  That’s a start.  

Secondly, I want people to become better read and informed in looking at this man.  I think if you wrote up a resume of Mitt Romney that did not mention Mormonism and talked about what he did as Governor and the stance he took on gay marriage and stem cell research and everything else that is a part of his life and paraded that resume around to evangelicals, they would all be saying, Wow!  This is our guy!  This is amazing!  

Well, then why is it that when you say, and by the way, he is a Mormon, suddenly some people would say, “Oh, I can’t go there.  It doesn’t make sense.”  Because the reality is we have had, I don’t know that we’ve had a President that precisely mirrors my theology and my values.  I don’t know that I could say that is true of anyone.  

So, I want people to read up on this.  I am beginning to circulate the — High Hewitt’s book is terrific, but for anybody who won’t read the whole book, they ought to read the Appendix which is the transcript of an interview Hugh did with two Biola University professors dealing with all of these theological questions and the acceptability of a Mormon candidate and what that means for our country.  It’s a terrific interview that is thoughtful and intelligent and I think draws very solid conclusions.  So, I want to get that circulated.  

We are beginning to do some meetings with evangelicals in key states.  The campaign asked me to go, in the next few weeks, to eight cities in South Carolina and Alabama and have these kinds of discussions that I am having with you guys, with groups of pastors and evangelical leaders.  So, I’ll do that.  And others are doing the same kind of thing.  I think we just keep doing it.  I’ve seen people turn the corner and I think — I understand that it is not a simple place to arrive for a lot of evangelicals.  It wasn’t simple for me.  I took time thinking it over carefully.  And not everybody close to me would be comfortable with what I’m doing.  I’ve got one or more members of my staff that I think have real reservations on my engagement on this.

JS:    I’ve talked to some of them.

MD:    You have?

JS:    Yeah.

MD:    And that’s okay.  We can do it civilly and I will tell you this, almost to a person, in the last six months, that I have talked to, people with real serious either reservations or just adamantly opposed to this idea of a Mormon — if I ask them about two questions, “What if the race came down to Mitt Romney and Candidate X or Candidate Y?” every person, I think without exception, who had debated me and had big, terrible reservations, ultimately would say, well, if it came down to that I guess I‘d go with the Mormon.  

And so, then it becomes something of a question of timing.  Because here’s the thing, if I had a personal conviction that it was wrong to help put a Mormon in the White House, then I couldn’t answer that question by saying, “Well, yeah, if it came down to this, I guess I would.”  If it’s wrong, it’s wrong.  

And yet, to a person that’s held these objections, they wind up saying, “Well, if it comes down to that, yeah, I guess I’d go with the Mormon.”  So, I would like more of those people to not wait until the 11th hour and see if it does come down to that choice, and then get involved.  I think if he is the best candidate at the end of the day, I think he is the best candidate today.  

And I want to say this too, because you don’t hear much of this.  I am not out speaking negatively about other candidates.  I think that is the dumbest kind of politics imaginable and I  have really been bothered by candidates who say, “Vote for me because these other people are bad people.”  That is a pretty weak rationale to vote for me, because the other people are lousy.  I want to support Mitt Romney, not because I think the other choices are terrible options, I want to support Mitt Romney because I think he is a great candidate, is a great option, a great person with the qualifications to manage and oversee and lead this government and so I am not circulating stuff about other candidates and what they did and what they said about various issues, because that is sort of saying, vote for us as the lesser of a bunch of evils.  I don’t think Mitt Romney is the lesser of several evils.  I think he is the best person right now.

LB:    Mark, something you said a moment ago leads into a question that I need to give a little bit of background on, if we have time.

MD:    Okay.

LB:    And I’ll also ask you if you are willing to look into your crystal ball a little bit.  We have noticed, John and I, as we have followed this issue for the last year– and we have looked at everything that has appeared in any news media at all about Romney and Mormonism—that every one of the truly nasty, vicious attacks on him, based on religion, have come from the liberal side of the political spectrum– from people on the left, which is interesting.  The most recent attack, which was the one that John mentioned, was an op-ed by Garry South, who is a Democratic strategist, and I find that fact interesting.  He said this, and I am quoting him:

The far more critical and basic question is, does Romney’s brand of faith and membership in a church of Latter Day Saints require that he question or dismiss the validity of the Christian tradition, and the efficacy of baptism into that faith of every non-Mormon adherent of Christianity who has ever lived since the end of the Apostolic era, and does he?

Again, an interesting question for a Democratic strategist to ask.  

Now, in your OpEd piece the same day, you said “there is a third option” for evangelicals, and I’m quoting again:

That’s the one Karl Rove believes was exercised by 4 million evangelicals in 2000, I could stay home.  The problem with that option is that it violates another evangelical tenet, a Christian citizen’s duty to vote.  

I am wondering:  If we get to a general election and those kind of attacks keep coming from people on the left, is there a danger that evangelical voters will in fact stay home, because they are being confused?

 I also have to say, I am a lawyer by profession.  When I read something like what Garry South said, my antennae go up and I ask myself, “What is he really up to, and what are his biases?” 

And of course, Garry South, as John said, is a long time political strategist famous for “dynamiting” the campaigns of the other parties, even during primary season.  So, that is a long background to the question.  Do you think there is a danger evangelicals will stay home because of attacks like that?

MD:    I personally don’t think so.  They may in some small numbers.  I don’t think they will in large numbers because this candidate, this person, I think is so attractive and intelligent and believable, and we many not understand Mormonism, but this guy has led a pretty public life.  It’s not like he just appeared out of nowhere and there is no record of this life.  He has been a pretty public figure for a long time.  And I think it would be, I would be surprised if in large numbers evangelicals stayed home if Romney were the nominee of his party.  Would some people do it?  Sure.  

I’ve talked to somebody, this kind of person might stay home:  I talked to somebody who just could not fathom this, could not get over this Mormon issue, and I said, “Let me ask you this, you’re on a ski trip in Utah, ski vacation, you crash into a tree, they rush you to the hospital, you need emergency brain surgery, the only surgeon on duty, the only neurosurgeon on duty is a Mormon, what do you do then?”  This person actually said to me, “I would not let a Mormon operate on me.”  

Well, that’s kind of the end of the debate with that person.  I can’t have a rational conversation after that.  So that kind of person might stay home.  But I don’t think that’s a majority evangelical approach either.

JS:    Mark, one of the things I contend and have contended over and over and over again on the blog is that I think that if we as evangelicals are to eliminate Romney on the basis of his faith, we are inviting the same for ourselves.  I’m wondering if you agree and have any further reaction to that?

MD:    I totally agree with that and I think that was THE premise, or certainly one of the premises of Hugh Hewitt’s book and it is a real warning.  And I think that is something we’d better pay attention to and we should appreciate.  Evangelicals are always bemoaning the fact that we don’t have a seat at the table, we don’t get appointments to key positions, and we certainly complain about mainstream media treatment of evangelicals, so we of all people should understand just what you said, if we lock out Mitt Romney because he is Mormon, I don’t know how we can complain about being locked out ourselves more than a lot of us already think we are.  So, I think that is a very critical point.

JS:    Mark, it has been a great interview.  Lowell, do you have anything else?

LB:    I want to ask Mark why he decided to be a volunteer for Romney and made a point of saying he refused to work for him professionally?

MD:    Yeah, that’s a good question.  I did it for probably two reasons.  One, I’m really not a political consultant.  I have a public relations firm and so we, our public relations firm, serves Christian organizations and causes, exclusively.  So, we don’t do, we don’t work on political campaigns, we don’t do all the things that political consultants do.  We don’t even do them.  

But I think the more important reason why I said that up front was I really wanted to earn his truest and shown him I did not have an ulterior motive.  I know these candidates get flooded with people with their hands out looking for a contract.  And I didn’t want them to think I was one of those people.  Nor do I want to — I didn’t want money for it.  It’s that simple.  And I am helping him and I think it gives me — the fact that I’m not on his payroll, I hope, gives my voice more credibility when I write and talk about him.  You know, you expect all the paid consultants to write op-ed pieces like I wrote and saying the things I’m saying to you, but I wanted more credibility.  I never wanted my message to be suspect because I was being paid and so I just told him right up front, I’m not here looking for a client.

JS:    Great.  Lowell, anything else?

LB:    Do you think Romney should give a Kennedy-type speech?  He’s getting lots of advice, mainly from people in the media and people on the left, that he needs to do just that.

MD:    That’s a big question and I don’t know if I am smart enough or old enough to know the answer to it.  But I think whether he gives a Kennedy-type speech, you know, THE speech, about his religion, or just continues to talk about it and answer it, I don’t know.  I don’t know.  I think he is making some speeches in the coming days at some important places.  He is doing a commencement address at Regent University in Virginia Beach in a couple of weeks.  I guess next week.  He is doing a commencement at Hillsdale College any day now and, but I don’t know if he has to give the big speech or just keep saying what he is saying, living his life the way he lives it, demonstrating that he believes what he says he believes, and let time take care of it.  I don’t know.  Honestly.

LB:    Fair enough.

JS:    Ok, very good.  Mark DeMoss, we thank you for taking the time for this interview.

MD:    Thanks.  I have enjoyed it and I will keep watching what you write.

JS:    Great.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney, Mark DeMoss, elections, president, interview

Sphere: Related Content

Posted in Interviews, Uncategorized | 1 Comment » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Recently:

• Huckabee: “Who me? What’d I do?”
• Mitt Romney as “Mormon of the Year?” Why?
• I Thought The Press Was Supposed To Investigate?!
• That Beck/Dobson Thing Won’t Go Away…
• New Year’s Eve Quick Links
• Following The Stories We Have Been Following
• History Being Rewritten Before Our Eyes
• Bigotry Abounds!
• ARRGH!
• Embarrassed By My Brethren…