Romney and The Polls:  Is His Faith A Factor?  

LOTS OF DISCUSSION TODAY about the Rasmussen poll showing Romney with very high "negatives:"

. . . 44% of Likely Voters would definitely vote against Romney if he’s on the ballot in 2008. That’s a point higher than the 43% who would definitely vote against [Hillary] Clinton.

Before we go any further, for perspective's sake, 33% said they would definitely vote against Fred Thompson.  Fred! has the lowest negatives of all the candidates.  What interests me is how many people say they will "definitely" vote against so many candidates.  I mean, how can so many feel that way about Arthur Branch Fred Thompson, of all people?

Enough digression.  A couple more nuggets from Rasmussen:

In terms of partisan reaction, it’s interesting to note that 25% of Republicans say they would definitely vote against Romney while 22% of Democrats would vote against Edwards.

Among unaffiliated voters, 44% say they will definitely vote against Clinton and 41% say the same about Romney.

(Emphasis in original.)  There was extensive back-and-forth at NRO about the Rasmussen poll. Byron York added some perspective from yet another poll, this one from Gallup: 

On another front, Gallup gives a little perspective to the question of Mitt Romney's negatives.  In the new poll, 33 percent have a favorable impression of Romney, 24 percent have an unfavorable impression, 26 percent have never heard of him, and 17 percent have no opinion.  That's an improvement for Romney; in early August, his favorable number was at 22 percent, with 31 percent unfavorable, 30 percent never heard of, and 17 percent no opinion.

JUMPING BACK TO RASMUSSEN, NRO's David Freddoso asks:

I have never been a Romney guy myself . . . Hillary Clinton had to do quite a bit to earn her "hate-me" stripes. What has Romney done to generate this kind of reaction?

Indeed.  What has he done?  I am confident that The Question is playing a role. 

But how big a role?  We have in Romney a candidate with very low name identification outside the early primary states.  He also belongs to church that is not well-known or well-understood, and that suffers more than its share of detractors (not to mention the misconceptions promoted by entertainment vehicles like "Big Love" and the upcoming "September Dawn").  My gut tells me that if, as I expect, Romney becomes a leading candidate, all that Question-related baggage will get lighter and lighter.  (I hope it is really my gut talking to me, and not the overly-optimistic portion of my brain.  John?)

I am not alone in joining the school of thought that maybe much of the "antipathy" toward Romney  will fade as Romney advances.  K-Lo reports the comments of a "a Team Romney dude:"

I haven’t seen how the question was posed to survey participants, but most national polls show that voters are still just learning about Mitt Romney, and that as they learn more about him he gathers more and more support.Take a look at the state by state polls where voters are more engaged, have more information about Gov. Romney and the issues he’s running on[referring to Iowa and New Hampshire].

We don't follow the politics on this blog.  We're more interested in questions of faith and politics.  It is certainly possible that Romney's faith is a big part of his "negatives."  Time may tell, however, whether it is really his faith that is the issue, or ignorance and misconceptions about his faith that raise those voter doubts.

John comments:  You know, I wondered about this too as I followed the discussion on The Corner yesterday, and this, frankly is one of those places where it is going to get really dicey.  The key issues as to whether Romney's negatives are related to The Question lie in a couple of things.  First what do people know of Romney besides his faith?  And secondly have code words been established in people's minds?

With regards to the first question, I would have to say that nationally (please note Romney is doing very well in places where he is campaigning and getting to know people) most people don't know much about him, and since virtually all that has been written about him has been The Question - I would have to say I am pretty sure it is a part of his national negatives.  There is good news there though.  Where Romney is known he is, to date, able to overcome that. Now the issue is will that effect flow into the Super-Duper Tuesday states where there are so many, so fast he cannot possibly operate that hard on the ground?  Physics won't allow him to be in that many places at one time, depaite the fact he is working all the other candidates into the ground.

The second issue is the real problem.  In simple discussion with those I encounter daily, the typical response is, thankfully, no longer "Mormon" but instead "flip-flopper."  Such people are generally few on facts and large on impression and when pressed the Mormon thing comes flying out something less than 50% of the time - enough to indicate that for some people there is a code word connection between the two, but not enough to say it is firmly established.  The leftie blogs, and MSM use the flip-flop thing with such rapidity and relish, that it was bound to take hold somewhere  Most of it is just a childish Kerry redux.  Once again it fades in the light of fact with most people.

There will be bigots and they will be ugly, but in general I think the news is good.  The negatives are largely ignorance, not prejudice.  To date, Romney has proven to be masterful at curing people's ignorance where it matters.  We have to remember, despite the enormous attention we pay to these things, most people are paying no attention.  I had a phone conversation yesterday with a very highly placed Democratic fundraiser who confessed that he was not paying much attention to presidential politics yet.  Even though the information to end the ignorance is out there now, most people aren't looking at it.  If Romney is as smart as I think he is, then that information will be where it needs to be when it needs to be there.

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Some people think religion matters . . . 

This one's for those who don't think the left will hit below the belt on religious issues.  Ed Morrissey has more.

Also on NRO, S.T. Karnick holds forth on why a governor is the best nominee for the GOP:

On the Republican side, the top-tier candidates are more varied. Among them are a Senator, McCain (although he’s just barely hanging on at this point, with New Hampshire his only hope for renewal); a former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani; and a governor, Mitt Romney, who would surely be the odds-on favorite if he were not a Mormon but who cannot energize the Republicans’ crucial voting bloc, evangelical Christians, unless there is no other viable alternative.

(Emphasis added.) Karnick goes on to promote Mike Huckabee as the right choice:  Huckabee's a former governor and, as a Baptist minister, doesn't have that nasty religion problem preventing him from "energizing the Republicans' crucial voting bloc." 

If Karnick is right, evangelicals vote as a bloc, and are energized to support a candidate only when he or she is an evangelical too.  Evangelical readers, how do you feel about being characterized that way?

John comments:  This is the second time I have seen something like this, let's call it "Romney, but…"  It happened quite a bit at the apex of Thompson-mania and threatens to happen again when and if he pulls the trigger.  And now in the interim, we are seeing it with Huckabee, a man with any number of admirable traits, but who simply lacks the horses for the long haul.

This is a very subtle form of bigotry.  It is as if we feel we are not bigots if we hold our nose and cooperate, but at the first opportunity to escape the "stench" we dive for cover.  Just a couple of things to think about.  The "stench" is a manifestation of bias, perhaps bigotry, and has nothing to do with the candidate himself.

Secondly, it takes an intensive and whole-hearted effort to win the presidency of the United States.  As Republicans, if we engage in the battle with one hand holding our noses it is a formula for the second President Clinton.  Romney is increasingly looking like the most viable representative of what we hold dear, regardless of where and how he worships - we are going to need to learn how to let go of our noses if we are going to have a chance in the fall.

Others are not so sure . . .

Oops, it looks like Iowa's voters haven't noticed that Romney is not supposed to energize them. Maybe having a message, a strong organization, an advertising budget and a strategy actually mean more than the candidate's faith.  S.T. Karnick, call your office.

Meanwhile, David French over at EFM has a little more to say about Mark Davis.  (Hint:  David thinks Mark is wrong.)

And here's a thoughtful view of how believers might view their associations with non-believers or other-believers:

[A]s Christians we must balance the courage and confidence of our convictions (Jesus is Lord!) with a desire to love and serve others who are wrong. We cannot just “be friends with everyone” nor can we simply abandon all friendships with those with whom we have serious disagreements.

That kind of nuanced thinking is probably too much for some people to bear. 

And finally . . .

Some guy who runs an influential GodBlog has some thoughts about what's going on inside the Evangelical world, the Mormon world, and some possible parallels.  And yes, it relates to  Article VI. And some Mormon guy who co-writes a political blog actually commented!  It's a brilliant exchange, and I recommend it to everyone. 

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As we alluded to yesterday, the story of the day was Mark Davis' piece originating at RCP, but syndicating everywhere.

But the issue of his religion, which some say has been overplayed, has in fact not been addressed with nearly the thoroughness and honesty that will be necessary to satisfy some in the Republican voting base.

 

It has not been addressed well by the candidate, and it has not been handled honestly by pundits. Until it is, it lurks as a torpedo that could spell the doom of his promising candidacy.

 

On radio and in print, I have made clear that Romney's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a non-issue to me. But this does not mean it is a non-issue for him, or to America.

 

I have known several Mormons in my life. They are all superb people, and I envision nothing in their faith that would peel me away from backing an LDS candidate.

 

But my conclusion has come only after a thorough examination of what Mormons believe. Some of it is vastly divergent from what I believe, and I have had to consider whether that is acceptable to me in a candidate.

First of all, Davis was able to figure out what Mormons believe and conclude it was not an issue for him without the candidate ever addressing it, so I fail to understand why he concludes the rest of the American electorate is incapable of doing the same thing.

There is a presumption in this argument that strikes me as simply silly.  Apparently, by Mr. Davis' logic, because the tenets of a faith are relatively unknown by most in the electorate, they are to be discussed.

Yet that is, and apparently will be, the continuing Romney policy. I don't know if the Governor thought he had successfully turned the tables in this next remark, but when he asked: "Do you think it makes a lot of sense for a Methodist to get up and say 'Let me tell you the unusual beliefs of the Methodist religion that you all don't know,'" I nearly jumped through the phone.

 

"Yes! That's exactly my point!" I wondered what that strange buried Methodist dogma was that he had in mind, but I gave him benefit of the doubt for grasping at a religion purely for the sake of example.

Why, I can think of many not-so-buried Methodist dogmas that could be considered "unusual."  For some in this country the simple claim that Christ was resurrected (a belief that Mormons and creedals share) is considered fantastical and unbelievable.  Do you see, Mr. Davis, your frame of reference is not necessarily the frame of reference shared by everyone in this nation.  If Romney answers the questions you want answered, so too would George W. Bush have to answer the questions someone else wants answered.  And that precisely violates the very spirit on which our system is based.

Davis is right - there are some people for whom an explanation of his faith is mandatory.  Such people are either lazy voters, for that information is readily available, or they do not really want an explanation, they want a refutation, or at least a limitation - something where Romney lets it be known that he somehow "doesn't really buy that silly pile of belief."

What Romney understands is that it is essentially and fundamentally his right as an American to believe whatever he chooses, and hold public office.  What Romney understands is that if he gives into the demands of people like Davis, we will have to be answering to the public about our beliefs in things like the resurrection, or transubstantiation, or healing, or tongues, or whatever miraculous claims your particular brand of Christianity may make.

[Lowell:  Bravo!  Bravisimo!]

I really wish people like Mr. Davis could understand that Romney is doing people like me, and him, a favor.  He is protecting us.  He is also putting the great American principle of the correct intersection of religion and politics ahead of his own election.  I have little doubt that Romney could deliver a speech that would win over the people that Mr. Davis refers to - it might even make him a shoo-in (although I don't think there as many of those people as perhaps Mr. Davis does), but in refusing to do so Romney is demonstrating quite a bit of character, and a deep understanding of America.  And finally, a great respect for his faith…and mine.

And Since We Are Talking About What Candidate Should Talk About…

Jonathon Martin reports on Guiliani's unwillingness to discuss his Catholic faith.

President Bush has been equally open about his Christianity.

Oh come on Jonathon!  Bush has talked about little of his faith except that which could readily fall within the commonly accepted boundaries of the American "public religion."  I have no idea what view of Methodism Bush holds or does not hold.  I don't know when was the last time he took communion.  I don't know when he was baptized.

Elsewhere…

Now this is an interesting point of view when it comes to religion and politcs.

Is David at EFM insulting me?

I never hear of these same people asking questions about the Christianity of those candidates who belong to our watered-down, mainstream denominations. I was reminded of how dramatically many Episcopalians, Presbyterians… [emphasis added]

I'll try to take solace by presuming that I am not among the "many" Presbyterians.

Lowell adds a few thoughts:

What follows is not obviously relevant to our Article VI theme, but I could not resist saying something about it.  Via Howard Kurtz and WaPo we have from the Boston Globe an entire story on Romney's clean speech habits:

"Whoop-de-do!" he says of John Edwards's proposal to let Americans save $250 tax-free. "Gosh, I love America," Romney said during one GOP debate. After hitting a long golf drive in one of his campaign videos, he shouts, "Holy moly!"

 

Romney often sounds as if he has stepped out of a time machine from 1950s suburban America, golly-ing and gosh-ing his way across the nation, letting out the occasional "Holy cow!" after something really shocks him.

 

When he won the straw poll, he pronounced himself "pleased as punch." On NBC's "Today" show a couple days later, he said his opponents would also "be pleased as punch if they could be in my position in Iowa today, no doubt."

 

Of course, every presidential candidate tries not to swear in public, so most deploy the occasional "darn." And Romney is hardly the only folksy candidate in a field that includes a former governor from rural Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, who is known for his colorful one-liners . . .

 

But the face Romney presents for public consumption could be right out of "Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver."

The focus of the piece is whether Romney really talks that way, or if he's putting on a false clean-language front.

David Gergen is trotted out to observe, sagely:

"This 'Ozzie and Harriet' world in which he lives seems to be his true world . . .. For that reason, there are some who find it a throwback. Others are very comfortable with it."

And here's a true academic's view:

Mary E. Stuckey, a professor of communication and political science from Georgia State University in Atlanta, said adopting a 1950s image could help Romney counter his opponents' contention that he is a flip-flopper who holds no true convictions.

 

"One of the things 1950s nostalgia evokes is integrity or honesty or truthfulness," she said. "I think people associate the 1950s with something that could be called authentic, and I think he needs that."

Can you believe this stuff? I wonder if Lisa Wangsness, the Globe staffer who wrote the story, realizes how ridiculous she looks. 

A few obervations:

• It may well be news to Langsness, but many people who take their Judeo-Christian-Muslem-Buddhist religion seriously try to use decorous language and to avoid profanity, obscenity, and vulgarity (and yes, those are three different things).  As a Mormon, I know members of my faith make that effort.  (And I wish I were more successful at it . . . .)  Not everybody talks the way people do in the newsroom.

• Hubert Humphrey often used the expression "pleased as punch."  He ran for president in 1968 and 1972.  Is Romney compared to him in the Globe piece? No, the comparisons are to Dwight Eisenhower and other figures from the 1950's– the better to fit in with the "Leave it to Beaver" meme.

• Is this really worth an article?

In my feeble mind the suspicion arises:  Can it be that MSM writers and the professorial punditocracy, overwhelmingly liberal and secular, simply find it too hard to believe that a man can live up to very high standards of personal behavior?  Is that so foreign to their experience?

We blog, you decide.

John adds:

It's not foreign Lowell - this is The Question in a thinly-veiled disguise.  They are building a code word.  We have been seeing increasing Osmond references when it comes to Romney's sons, but that is just a bit too obvious.  So instead they make a reference to something "squeaky-clean" which conjures up those other references and soon we can talk about Romney's religion without really talking about it.  This is a meta-euphemism.

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Normally, our Monday Reading Lists are quite extensive and link packed.  That is not the case today - news was hard to come by.  Could it be because it is August?  Undoubtedly that is a factor, but could it not also be because of something that the Cleveland Plain Dealer admitted out loud in an editorial Sunday under this headline:

For now, Romney looks like the GOP front-runner - an editorial

To my mind there is little doubt that the straw polls of the last couple of weeks have shown most of the punditry that the Romney candidacy is the real deal.  It has moved past the point of being able to be dismissed off-hand because of his faith.  The straw polls have show it is time to get serious.

Certainly the time for endless speculation about whether people will vote for a Mormon is at an end.  They have, and they will.  Oh, sure, some of the smaller newspapers will continue to ponder, like these:

• The East Valley Tribune (this is from the greater Phoenix area where there are a lot of Mormons and a lot of Mormon-haters); and,
• The Cedar Valley Courier (Iowa - which does matter politically right now)

And of course, there will be those that will try to capitalize on the echoes of the buzz like "Transworldnews" which put out two press releases over the weekend, here and here (did anybody besides Lowell and I hunt these down?) but I have to think those who are serious, and who matter, are going to  move on.

Lowell:  I thought the East Valley Tribune piece was fascinating.  A documentary film about Mormons running for president and addressing historical controversies about Joseph Smith is "dog bites man;" but such a film in this era, done by a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who has a master's degree from Biola, is . . . something else altogether.

We have to wait for everybody to get back to work in September to know for sure, but I think we are entering a new phase with all of this.  I know it will not quiet down permanently. This is too good a storyline for the press to abandon completely.

I do think it will transition from political inquiry to weapon.  No longer will the political pros be asking "Will they…?"  Instead we will be treated to the whisper campaigns and the sotto voce comments of Romney's opponents.  We have started to see this in some of the emails and fliers that surfaced around Ames.  But it is my sincere hope that the other Republicans will be smart enough not to play that game.  It can ONLY hurt the voice of religion in general in politics and they all have a stake in that.

Undoubtedly, throughout the primaries there will be eruptions, likely from overzealous partisans, not from the campaigns themselves.  The campaigns should denounce these eruptions at every turn.  American will be better for it.

One thing is for sure - now it gets serious.

 Lowell:  John's right.  We have long predicted (or hoped, or both) that once Romney becomes recognized as a credible candidate, news media interest will move from his faith to the serious substantive issues he is addressing.  Put another way, when it becomes clearly possible that a candidate may actually become not only a major party's nominee for president, but the actual President of the United States, that has a way of concentrating one's attention.

UPDATE!

Thank you for all the emails, yes we know about Mark Davis' RCP piece this morning - but it was not up until after we had originially published this post.  We had hoped to subject it to some scrutiny and analysis before we put up the link - we will for tomorrow's RL.

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Ahhh, the left… 

Where to begin with this piece of fetid, anti-religious waste product on paper?  Rhonda Chriss Lokeman wants to back people of faith into a corner that allows them no nuance, no thought or reason.  She presumes that if you are staunchly religious (though in this case she appears to limit herself to Romney and Mormonism) you cannot think, that you cannot disagree with your church, that you are somehow incapable of subtlety.

But most offensive is her "nickname" for Romney - "Big Love."  This is, of course, a reference to the HBO show about a polygamous family, a show that makes plain the fact that it does not represent LDS faith.  If you don't like a candidate and you want to hang him with a sobriquet that is a little insulting, it should at least be based in something somewhere approaching reality.

This piece boldly illustrates that attacks on Romney from the left based on religion, are really attacks on religion in general.  She tries to make a case that Romney's faith denies him any claim to votes from the Religious Right, making it appear, as if the Religious Right are the bigots.

Why is it that as Romney ascends, and The Question appears to be quieting down (at least for a while), the left is getting shriller and shriller about it?  Could it be they are wrong about Romney, and the Religious Right is proving to be far more open-minded than they imagined?

About That Movie…

Yesterday, we passed on an item out of the Chicago Sun Times about the Romney campaign's attitude concerning September Dawn.  It was based on "unamed" sources.  Later in the day, MSNBC reports the campaign denies commenting on the movie at all and, and the movie producers deny having Romney in mind when they greenlighted the film.  Oh come on people, give the CST a break, I mean we darn near had a Question free day yesterday, the MSM couldn't allow that to happen.

 The Huckabee Boomlet…

OpinionJournal's Political Diary (subscription required) seems to assume that the Religious Right is Huckabee's for the taking after his stronger-than-expected showing at Ames last weekend.  This assumption presumes that Evangelicals will automatically vote for Evangelicals, something of a bigoted presumption.  Especially in light of this:

Iowans do not typically expect to pay for their own tickets, yet Mr. Huckabee claims to have won more than a thousand more votes than the number of tickets he provided. A former Baptist minister, he compares the extra support to the Biblical feeding of a crowd of thousands with two fish and five loaves of bread.

Given the Luntz results from the New Hampshire debate, such claims are going to have very narrow appeal.

Elsewhere…

Yawn

What about bias in elections?

Friday Finally…

A little inter-sectarian humor.

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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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