Article VI Blog

We were honestly struggling to find anything to post today because of a dearth of material related to Romney and The Question. That's not a bad thing, in our minds; if no one's talking about Mitt Romney's faith, that's okay with us.

At the very end of the day Wednesday, however, I did find one item that could, with a little stretching, be deemed relevant. Rich Lowry posted these poll results from South Carolina:

Thompson - 22%
Giuliani - 18%
Romney - 17%
McCain - 11%
Huckabee - 7%
Brownback - 3%
Paul - 2%

Now, as a guy who's been bemoaning Romney's poor showing, so far, in South Carolina, and tying that showing to the high percentage of Evangelicals and Baptists in that state, I have to say this seems like encouraging news. That's a big jump for Governor Romney. We'll see if it's real or just another quirky poll.

John Chimes In…

Oh, it' real Lowell. Consider this piece out of Dallas.

We Texas Republicans tend to like our leaders to be mainstream Christian, steadfast and, well, Texan, if possible.

[…]

But Mr. Romney seems to be climbing that hill with grace and energy. I watched from backstage in Grand Prairie as he brought a concert crowd to its feet with a crisp tribute to our armed forces and a commitment to let them do their job until we win.

Afterward, I spoke with many who said their appreciation of Mr. Romney went farther than polite acknowledgment of his war support.

"I've been looking at him more and more," said one of the many veterans in attendance.

Or Daniel Henninger today in OpinionJournal on diversity. He cites a study that demonstrates that 'diversity' does not work likes the libs thought it should, but towards the end comes this:

Here, too, Robert Putnam has a possible assimilation model. Hold onto your hat. It's Christian evangelical megachurches. "In many large evangelical congregations," he writes, "the participants constituted the largest thoroughly integrated gatherings we have ever witnessed." This, too, is an inconvenient truth. They do it with low entry barriers to the church and by offering lots of little groups to join inside the larger "shared identity" of the church. A Harvard prof finds good in evangelical megachurches. Send this man a suit of body armor!

The fact of the matter is Evangelicals are far more open-minded than the MSM might have us believe. They concentrate on the fundamentalist and near-fundamentalist which excludes, significantly, the great middle of creedal Christian adherents in this nation. Yes the very conservative Southern Baptists (Land, Mohler, Falwell…) are the largest denomination, but the rest of us put together are a much larger group. Yesterday, I linked to an example of a far more moderate Lutheran pastor arguing that pastors should keep their mouths shut on specific political issues. There are far more of him in the creedal Christian community than of the Land/Mohler variety. Places like SC may be a harder sell than places like Iowa or New Hampshire, but they are far from close-minded.

Meanwhile, a Chicago columnist reports that the Romney campaign is no fan of the, perhaps (its release has been postponed several times at the last minute), September Dawn movie. There seems little doubt that the film's release is meant to capitalize on the overwhelming presence of things Mormon in the media, both as promotion and as attack. However, I truly believe that most Americans are smart enough to know that it was 150 years ago - the nation still had slavery and was soon to go to war with itself. If we are going to start slinging mud about what happened then, EVERYBODY is going to end up very dirty.

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