Fred Thompson:  The Evangelical Choice?

David Domke thinks religious conservatives are ready to jump on the Thompson bandwagon, and that Romney is not going to do well among that group:

Mitt Romney has also been courting social conservatives, but his Mormon beliefs and questioned shifts on abortion and same-sex marriage present him with significant challenges. Consider that in the most recent data on religious voters, a poll conducted for Time magazine in May, Romney's approval rating among Protestants was far lower than that of other GOP candidates: McCain and Giuliani were each viewed favorably by roughly 55% of Protestants, whereas only 29% viewed Romney in the same light. This may be changing, but that's a chasm that won't be easily crossed.

Then there's this July 21 CNN/Opinion Research poll for South Carolina:

Republicans

Giuliani 28
McCain 20
Thompson 17
Gingrich 6
Romney 4

It's too early to say, of course, but if those poll numbers are accurate they are disturbing and very difficult to explain away.  You can try all you want to blame Romney's poor showing in South Carolina, as well as Protestant lack of enthusiasm for him, on his changed position on abortion, but that's a non-starter. Thompson has not exactly been a conservative firebrand on those issues, and Giuliani's position on them flat-out opposes the views of most Evangelicals.  Ideologically, there is not a dime's bit of difference ideologically between Romney and Thompson. Religiously, little is known about Thompson except that he was baptized in the Church of Christ as a child.  Even so, Domke doesn't think Thompson has to say much to satisfy Evangelicals on that front:

In late March, Focus on the Family's James Dobson said he doubted that Thompson was a Christian. But [U.S. News & World Report writer Dan] Gilgoff–whose 2007 book The Jesus Machine documents the rising political influence of Dobson–reported that Dobson is now "rumored to be reassessing Thompson." Indeed, a Dobson spokesman laid out the political pathway for Reagan, er Thompson, telling CNN that "Thompson hasn't clearly communicated his religious faith, and many evangelical Christians might find this a barrier to supporting him."

 

Translation: show us a sign–a public sign–and we'll believe. Expect Thompson, therefore, to deliver a high-profile speech about values and faith in the coming months, perhaps even before he kicks off his campaign (now rumored to be set for just after Labor Day).

If Domke's right, and Thompson becomes the Evangelical favorite, the reasons why will be pretty clear.

John comments: There is little doubt that there is an Evangelical move to Thompson, but it is, at this moment, from a particular corner of Evangelicalism.  That corner is the hard core near-fundamentalist types.

I think Lowell is being a bit hard, but not too much.  The flip-flop thing is almost irretrievably tied up with Romney's faith.  The faith creates "unease" and the changes of heart turn that unease into conviction.  But please bear in mind it is pure emotion at this point.  There is little or nothing really known about Thompson.

At the moment Thompson is not a candidate, he is "none of the above."  There has been unease with the major candidates all along.  People are looking for the perfect candidate and he does not exist (certainly SHE doesn't, he said, taking a huge swipe at you know who) - Thompson is not that either, and it will become apparent to most once Thompson actually sees the light of day - a day that seems to be getting farther and farther away.

What I find really interesting is that in the wake of the Treviño piece last week there has been a noticeable up-tick in the blogosphere of people trying to justify discussing religion and particularly Romney's religion.  It seems like before people felt like they had an "evangelical" candidate they played the religion card close to their chest.  What happens if Thompson does not turn out to be the perfect "evangelical" candidate and that bridge is burned?  Politics can be a harsh mistress.  It is awful early to bet the farm.  (Quick - call the mixed metapher police )

Also, it should not be forgotten that it is the media's deepest desire for Romney to be rejected because of his faith, they can use that fact to attempt to neutralize the Religious Right in general.  No matter what happens, that is the likely MSM narrative.  That's why blogs like this one need to try and find what is really going on.  And we will.

Adding some other stuff:

The LATimes Religion beat reporter discusses how such reporting has tested his faith. (HT: Hugh Hewitt.)  It is a sad tale of covering the atrocities of almost all faiths, but it makes two important points.  First the MSM hates religion.  Secondly:

IN late 2001, I traveled to Salt Lake City to attend a conference of former Mormons. These people lived mostly in the Mormon Jell-O belt — Utah, Idaho, Arizona — so-named because of the plates of Jell-O that inevitably appear at Mormon gatherings.

 

They found themselves ostracized in their neighborhoods, schools and careers. Often, they were dead to their own families.

 

"If Mormons associate with you, they think they will somehow become contaminated and lose their faith too," Suzy Colver told me. "It's almost as if people who leave the church don't exist."

I personally think that runs both ways, creedals are afraid that mingling with Mormons will somehow contaminate them too.  Not sure how that works.  Lowell, I don't feel contaminated, do you?  Haven't changed my faith either….

Lowell:  Nope.  And by the way, Lobdell's reporting about Mormon ostracism of those who leave the church is entirely anecdotal.  The subject is complex, and I think any reporter who makes  the effort to discuss it with a broad range of Mormons and disaffected Mormons would grasp  that complexity.  In my view (and I think I am in the majority) any Mormon who ostracizes a disaffected or former church member is not living his/her religion.  Period.

There are some object lessons here.

Count on the Old Grey Lady to say that which has been said so many times before.  They still think it's not news until they say so.

The BBC looks at left-leaning faith.

Well, that just about sums it up.  Have to love those Letters to the Editor.

This guy is begging for trouble.  There is no faith, including my own, where I would have a problem conjuring up a problematic doctrine if I wanted to.

And finally…

This would be funny if I didn't know there are people that actually thought that way.  The problem with absurdity as humor is that it has to be, you know, actually absurd.

Meanwhile, this is legitimately funny:

Given the shortcomings of the other Republican candidates, Romney would be the clear front-runner, if not for one rarely discussed matter: his religion.

Clearly this guy has never read a single article written about Romney, since they all mention his religion.

Lowell:  Yes, that is an amazing statement.  I almost never agree with Al Hunt, but he's too smart to saying something that dumb.  Maybe he meant other candidates don't discuss Romney's religion?  I do think he was pretty close to the target with this:

The real root of anti-Mormon sentiment is the religion's passion for proselytizing - Romney and his five children all spent two years as church missionaries - and an illegitimate threat: to some, it's a weird cult.

 

Religious fundamentalists traditionally fear potential rivals. Four decades ago, some church-run colleges in the South were more receptive to Jews than Catholics on the faculties. That's because their daughters were much less likely to marry a Jew or convert to Judaism; Catholicism was more of a threat.

Now that is a subject that is truly rarely-discussed.  To me, it's the elephant in the room, and it's getting bigger and bigger all the time.

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Religion in The Public Square, Cont'd

NRO's Joshua Treviño e-mails this response to yesterday's post about his NRO piece on The Question. He quotes us, then comments:

"Even so, I disagree with Treviño's apparent argument that Romney's faith may and should be discussed, and discussed, and discussed, to the point that Mormonism becomes the central narrative of his campaign."

 

If that appears to be my argument, then I have written poorly.  I simply wish to state that it is permissible to discuss religion — including Mitt Romney's religion.  For the record, I have many problems with Mitt Romney, and none of them are related to his faith.

 

Thanks for the kind words, and for reading the piece.

We appreciate Josh's clarification, and I need to add one of my own:  He says in his piece:

[W]e may fairly discuss Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and what it signifies for his governance. We may further discuss Mormonism per se and its role in public life . . . ."

I simply worry about where such an approach will take us.  In Romney, we have a candidate with a religious faith that is not well-known and that is therefore subject to much distortion and appeals to bigotry.  Indeed, such bigotry is more than a theoretical worry; Mormonism's adherents have in the past suffered intense persecution.  So have other believing peoples, of all kinds, even today in America.  If it becomes commonplace and accepted to engage in public discussion of Romney's religious faith "and what it signifies for his governance," and of his faith "per se and its role in public life," I am quite sure that discussion will take over the campaign narrative.  It's simply an awful scenario to contemplate.

John adds these e-mailed comments in response: 

We always appreciate when people whom we link to and discuss write to us and respect us.

If Josh has read Hugh Hewitt's book, then he knows where we are on things, so we have some areas of disagreement, and frankly, I don't think Hugh would disagree with him as much as he thinks.  Hugh's problem with Geraghty was what I alluded to, the establishment of a code. Geraghty's piece was poorly written in my opinion. Josh's was well written and he did not create the impression that we referenced.  We have no problem with Romney being identified as Mormon, nor do we have a problem with the press writing about Mormonism. (Remember, I am the evangelical one of this blogging pair), provided they do so truthfully and thoroughly - something that is entirely rare.  I do think Mormonism as Romney's religion is more "off limits" than say Giuiliani's because it is much less well known, and what is commonly known is usually bad, and contemporarily untrue.

Matt Anderson Of Mere Orthodoxy has additional thoughts. 

John decides to get long-winded:  After reading through all this as Lowell as so well summarized it, it may be time to come up a with a loose set of boundaries for what is and is not legitimate religious discussion in a political setting.  In the Mere-O post linked above, Matt quoted me on how the religious and political spheres do interact - the question is how and where?

We have discussed this before here, but let's try it again.  Religion has a fairly narrow focus in its proscriptions to behavior and thought.  Thus when it comes to the problems of governance, one must build a thought structure on top of and out of the religion to help decide what to do - this is called a worldview.  For example, no religion I know has specific instructions on the welfare state in a republic.  We must take the principles of our faith and extrapolate into the specifics of a circumstance like that.  Interestingly, even adherents to the same religion can come to different conclusions about such a specific issue when forming their worldview.

This gives rise to the first fallacy in virtually all media writing about religion and politics. They attempt to tie a specific political stance to religion, thus "All Evangelicals are pro-life."  Such attempts then lead to the religion becoming a political label, and that is where bigotry can arise, soon the label supplants the thought behind the stance.  The label then becomes a stereotype, which when used pejoratively becomes bigotry.

Thinking people, people like Matt Anderson and apparently Joshua Treviño, want to defend their well thought out intellectual reasoning, and they have every right to do so.  However, they often forget that the shorthand I just described is what most people think and all the deeper they ever go into a subject.  Much as we wish deep thinking and reason could supplant ignorance and bigotry, sadly that is often just not the case.  The intellectually lazy shorthand that creates bigotry can only be overcome in the larger public context by a different shorthand.

Thus, context matters.  In the halls of academia, discussions about religion and politics are probably fair game and well-done.  But, in this Internet age, those discussions leak into the greater public consciousness like never before, and they are often misunderstood, misquoted, and  grossly misused.  While I am certain both Matt and Josh would take the time to reason thorugh their discussion, their defense of discussing religion in the public square will be pull-quoted by someone out there as permission to say the obviously bigoted statement, "Mormons are fools and you cannot vote for one!"

Thus, a mass-media specialist like Hugh Hewitt would have general prescription against talking religion in politics because he knows such a conversation in his setting will reach the lowest common denominator very quickly.  So the general rule becomes, "Know your audience, speak accordingly - and imagine your audience broader than you think."

There is another huge fallacy in these discussions, and that is it is important to have a secular viewpoint when discussing religion in politics, it is first a question of religion or no religion, not which religion - religious people tend to forget that.  For example, attempting to disprove the miraculous claims of Mormonism while holding the miraculous claims of creedal Christianity is a losing battle for both faiths.  To the secular mind, miracles are miracles are miracles.  If you discredit the miracles of one faith, you discredit the miracles of your own.

In other words, save it for seminary.  To my mind, because our politics, if not our society, is definitionally and constitutionally secular, this does make any discussion of the miracle claims of any religion off-limits in the political public square.  And since most religion is established in its miracle claims, it puts religion pretty far out of bounds to begin with.  To do otherwise would abrogate the freedom of individual religion that is as deeply held by our constitution as its secular nature.

Again, audience is the key and in a new media age, audience is not necessarily as limited as we think it is.

So, the bottom line is this.  In the new media age we must all become public spokespersons.  It is no longer enough to think we are just talking to four guys at the lunch table.  One of them might blog it, it will get linked, picked up by the MSM and the next thing you know that statement that was acceptable at the lunch table because of what everyone "understood," is now completely out-of-context and justification for something incredibly heinous.

It is sad but true, we must think lowest common denominator….

The Wisdom of Small-Town Newspapers

Look at the second letter to the editor here.  I wonder if this seventh-grader would like an internship on this blog?

John:  I think there is a joke in that - even a 7th grader gets it.

And here's a Christian writer who grew up in the West, around Mormons; doesn't care much for the religion; but likes Mormons themselves and is open to voting for Romney.

Elsewhere Around The Web

This analyst thinks conservative evangelicals have found their man in Fred Thompson.  So does the LATimes.  John adds: I pretty well said my piece on the Thompson/Evangelical thing here.  Nothing would please the left better, including the MSM, than to watch he religious folk eat each other alive in a primary campaign.  In fact, as the next link shows, they are kind of counting on it.

Finally, in The Left Wing and a Prayer, Noemie Schaefer Riley comments provocatively on Democratic candidates' efforts to invoke religious themes.  You need to read the whole thing, but here's one 'graph:

[L]et's be honest, no one thinks the 2008 election is going to be decided on gay marriage. Secularists probably won't risk having a president who will keep the troops in Iraq just to make a point about abortion.

 

Interestingly, the fact that the election will not be determined by social issues may make it a watershed for both parties. Despite the protests of some evangelical leaders, the Republicans may nominate a vocally pro-choice politician for the first time in a quarter century. And the Democrats may start to sneak God back under their big tent. 

As Riley notes elsewhere in her piece, that last attempt may be much more difficult than the Democrats think.

John snips:  if we chew each other up in the primary, the Dems might just be able to claim religious superiority - then where will we be?

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[T]hough faith must be reclaimed as a valid font of policy and participation in the public square, it does not follow that faith and the faithful should be rendered immune from critique within that square. Full participation is both benefit and burden, both to the faith itself — and its adherents. It means that Catholic officeholders may rightly be asked what they will do when their Church and their politics conflict; and it means that we may fairly discuss Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and what it signifies for his governance. We may further discuss Mormonism per se and its role in public life.

Fred Thompson, Joe Carter, and Lobbying 

This is only tangentially related to religion, but it now seems clear that Fred Thompson did lobby for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), a pro-abortion organization, in 1994.  He billed 19 hours to that client over the course of a year, despite "categorically" denying that he had done so.  His spokesman told the L.A. Times, "Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period."  I am a lawyer, and I am pretty sure I would remember 19 hours of work I did in 1994, but I don't know the circumstances here well, and Thompson has done a lot of things besides practicing law since then, so he might have sincerely forgotten.  Why is this relevant to Article VI Blog?  Because, as we wrote yesterday, there appears to be an Evangelical push to get behind Thompson as a conservative alternative to Mitt Romney without the Governor's unacceptable religious background. (HT:  Joe Carter, who's one of the Evangelicals mentioned in the Nation story we linked to yesterday.)

Vast Evangelical Conspiracy Revisited 

Speaking of that Nation story, Joe Carter also has some comments about its conspiratorial nature, about which we expressed skepticism yesterday.  I am still unsure just how much "there" is there, but I trust Joe a lot more than I trust The Nation.

Elsewhere Around The Web

So much for Mormons sticking together.  Of 16 currently serving in Congress (how did that many get elected?) only 4 support Romney.

Bill Keller, described here as "the world’s leading internet evangelist and the head of Liveprayer.com with over 2.4 million subscribers to his Daily Devotional," is fast reaching the level of shrillness that makes him pretty much irrelevant, but it's useful to know what the nutter element is saying.

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Making The Argument That It's OK To Make An Issue of A Candidate's Religion

I agree, it's a tough argument to make.  Maybe that's why people keep trying - they love the challenge.  For example, Matthew Yglesias and Ross Douthat engage in this "discussion" on Bloggingheads TV about Mitt Romney and Mormonism.  Yglesias and Douthat seem especially interested in the notion that electing a Mormon president will legitimize Mormonism and aid its missionary efforts.  Al Mohler has long promoted that worry, and Richard John Neuhaus has recently joined in.  If you have the patience to sit through 15 minutes of breezy intellectual pomposity, the Ygelsias-Douthat video is an interesting glimpse into the left's view of religion generally. 

Yglesias, of course, is a proud man of the left, and not someone we'd expect to be very sympathetic to organized religion.  He describes himself in his bio:

Desperately out of touch with the American mainstream, Yglesias was born and raised in Manhattan and studied philosophy at Harvard where he was editor in chief of The Harvard Independent, a campus alternative weekly.

Douthat, for his part, think it's "silly" to argue that a candidate's religion should not be taken into account when voting.  He also loves the idea that Mormonism is not Christian. All in all a pretty ridiculous video, but I'm sure Yglesias and Douthat thought it was profound.

As for Neuhaus, here's the most interesting paragraph of his recent First Things blog post:

Anti-Catholicism is, in my judgment, an unreasonable prejudice. Others, of course, will disagree, but not enough others to prevent the election of a Catholic president. Anxiety about the strengthening of Mormonism by virtue of there being a Mormon president is not unreasonable. One may or may not share that anxiety, but it is not unreasonable.

I am really beginning to wonder what it is about Mormonism that bothers Fr. Neuhaus so.  Frankly, I find his argument above embarrassing, coming from a man of Neuhaus's stature.  He is essentially arguing, I assume with a straight face, that anti-Mormon prejudice is "reasonable." John, am I off-base?

John responds:  Pardon me while I get a bit historical/theological for a minute.  Neuhaus is decidely Roman Catholic, and I think Douthat is, but I am not 100% certain.  Roman Catholicism views itself as THE CHURCH, as does the LDS, something which freaks out a certain branch of Protestants as we have seen.  The Roman Catholic church enjoys diplomatic, meaning nation-state, status.  This is largely an old Europe historical artifact, but is still operative in parts of the world, and deeply implanted in the psyche of the Roman Catholic church.  This fact is important to Roman Catholicism in its claims to being THE CHURCH - hence the Pope's declaration earlier last week that Protestants were not part of the real, true church.

Thus it is natural for Catholics, as very distinct from Protestants, to compete on a political level - it is part of how they view their legitimacy.  Now the RC Church functions quite differently in the United States than elsewhere because of our political system, but that does not change the training and impulse, especially in higher ups with international focus such as Neuhaus.  As Roman Catholics view such things, the election of a Mormon president is "a victory" for Mormonism and legitimacy.

The discussion is entirely baffling from Protestants whose religious views are antithetical to this kind of thinking on the part of the Roman Catholic church.  The Protestant movement started largely out of protest to the fact that the Roman Catholic church had lost its focus on matters spiritual and become functionally a political body.  It is from protestantism that the ideas on which America is built flowed.  To worry about political legitimacy somehow granting spiritual legitimacy to an religious movement is decidedly against the foundations on which protestantism was built.  But then politics has a way of corrupting religion as was seen in Roman Catholicism (BTW, I think the RC church has "reformed" since the 16th century, although their authority would be questioned if they admitted to it, so…) so it is unsurprising that the rise of Evangelical political power in the nation of the last two decades could result in some forgetfulness about our roots.  This is one of the primary reasons that I participate in this blog.

The only real question in all of this is whether the LDS is more like Roman Catholicism in its view or more like Protestants.  My studies of the last 15 months have shown me that while once decidedly in the Roman Catholic model, the LDS is now far more protestant in its outlook on these matters than catholic.  This leaves the Roman Catholics competing with a wraith….

But more importantly, one has to ask if such questioning is American?  The answer is decidedly - NO!  The American political structure, born of the ideas about freedom that appeared in the religious oppressions of state-established churches, and the historical lessons of how such religious/political alliances served to corrupt religion, decided to separate the religious and political "spheres" (I am here borrowing a phrase from Abraham Kuyper who wrote much later than the American Revolution, but whose vocabulary is quite useful in this discussion).  These spheres must, of necessity, interact with each other, but they do not, under the American system, gain authority from each other. There is a difference between authority and legitimacy, one is temporal, the other ephemeral; however, unless the ephemeral can be levered into the temporal somehow, something the American system is designed to prevent, then it is of little consequence.

Any legitimacy that might be granted to a religion by virtue of the election of an adherent to that religion being elected to high office would result in converts to that religion that were seeking authority that the American system would not grant them.  The conversion would be in the political sphere, not the religious one.  The question would concern whether the religion in question considered such a conversion genuine.  That is a question that only the particular religion can answer and is far too theological for this blog.  

Who's Out To Get Whom?

This Nation article is very interesting, and if accurate, is quite disturbing.  The problem is, I am skeptical of any piece appearing The Nation.  The article seems intent on attacking the Christian Right for attacking Romney.  It's difficult for me to find the bad guy here.

John comments:  The story, while quite conspiratorial in tone, is pretty much factually correct, and I am well acquainted with some of the players involved.  No one that matters among the Religious Right has been quite as bald-faced about all this as this story paints matters, but there is little question that certain factions within the Religious Right are lining up behind Thompson and doing so at the seeming expense of Romney.

What matters here are the motivations for those moves, and there is precious little information in that department.  Which presents a huge dilemma for the Religious Right.  Without Thompson officially in the race, and all the subsequent speeches, policy papers, personal appearances, etc. that accompanies such a action, there is no substance upon which these people can hang their reasons for moving in this direction.  That fact creates the opportunity for critics, most notably the left, personified in this instance by The Nation, to paint a picture of religious prejudice and bias whether that is the actual motivation involved or not.

At the moment there simply is insufficient evidence to say whether these moves are religiously based or otherwise, but that also means there is insufficient evidence to deny the charge.  These factions within the Religious Right would be very smart to "keep their powder dry" until such time as there is some substance to the Thompson campaign.  At this point they are leaving themselves wide open to this kind of attack, and it is one the left has been salivating over since anyone knew Romney was thinking about getting in.

The last time there was this much backing for an undeclared candidate in an already well-established race it was Ross Perot.  Perot's only real effect in two campaigns was to split off mostly the dissatisfied Republican base and give us the Bill Clinton presidency.  There is a danger of that here as well.  If Thompson gets in, then grand, let the games begin, but right now all that can come of this kind of public maneuvering is a delegitimizing of the religious voice in politics because of the appearance of bias and even bigotry, and a loss of the White House for the Republican Party.  Neither of these are outcomes that I particularly want to see.  Nor do the players in this game that I know personally.

Elsewhere Around The Web

Fred Thompson wants that Evangelical vote too.

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Due to John's vacation and my professional demands, today's list will be brief.

Our focus is on a segment of yesterday's Political Diary, a Wall Street Journal/Opinion Journal web newsletter (subscription only - sorry!).   There Taylor Buley writes of a US News & World Report cover that "linked 'Mormons' with Masons, Scientology, Opus Dei, the Mafia and Skull & Bones in a run-down of "secret societies."

US News quickly apologized:

A special newsstand-only edition of our Mysteries of History series published last month makes an inadvertent reference to the Mormon faith on the cover that does not properly reflect that edition's contents. The relevant article in the issue refers to a breakaway Mormon sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose leader is awaiting trial for his alleged role in arranging marriages between his followers and underage girls.

 

While the article makes a distinction between that polygamous sect and mainstream Mormonism's rejection of polygamy, the reference to Mormons on the cover does not make this distinction. It was not our intention to imply that mainstream Mormonism is a secret society, sect, or cult, and we regret any offense that the reference to Mormons on the cover may have caused. -The Editors  

Unfortunately, Buley tied the story to Romney: "So far, the Romney campaign has apparently been silent on the matter."   Then he goes on to make this point:

[W]hen the magazine's editors say it was not their intention to imply that Mormons are crazy, it's fair to suspect they're really saying: "We didn't mean to tell you want we really think." Given all the major newsmagazines' propensity for putting Jesus on the cover several times a year (because such issues sell), readers of other faiths might be forgiven for wondering what magazine editors really think about them too.  

At least three aspects of this incident are noteworthy.  First, and in fairness to US News, the magazine seems to have made the all-too-common mistake of confusing oddball polygamous sects, which claim a connection to early Mormonism, with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the legal and historical successor of the church organized by Joseph Smith in 1830, now based in Salt Lake City, Utah.  To its credit, US News also apologized quickly.

Second, as much as I enjoy Political Diary, Taylor Buley seems to have gotten this story wrong.  He bashes US News for implying that "Mormons are crazy," but it appears that the magazine was really suggesting something about polygamous sects claiming a connection to Mormonism– and what US News was saying was that those sects are "secret," not crazy.  It seems to me that the mainstream news media show enough real bias without their critics claiming bias where a simple mistake was made– and a fairly common one at that.

Finally, it is ironic that while criticizing US News for bias in a story that does not even mention Romney, Buley makes the story about Romney. (Political Diary even ran Romney's portrait with Buley's commentary.) Clearly the "Mormon narrative" is now part and parcel of Governor Romney's campaign. 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming months.  Romney, for his part, seems to be focusing on issues that he believes will resonate with "values voters," who are overwhelmingly religious.  His "Ocean" television ad, which we wrote about yesterday, is clearly part of that effort.

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This is such a perfect follow-up to this morning’s reading list that we had to post it right away. Romney’s team has essentially put some of the text of his Townhall op-ed from last Friday into this television advertisement:

The ad will begin airing today in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. What will the response be from conservatives who are religious people? Will it be, “Yes! That’s the kind of candidate I want!” Or will it be, “That’s nice, but . . . .?”
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