Article VI Blog

As always, the blue box in the sidebar is the place to find everything written in the wake of the speech. But we got pictures!

Your humble bloggers posed in front of the podium – faces made for blogging!

Richard Land being interviewed

And now some

Reax Commentary…

Who liked it?

My Favorite Milblogger Dadmanly – Jeff is one of the smartest guys I know and this is the first time I have every seen him post on a political matter – that deserves linking.

According to Duane Patterson – James Dobson did, and according to Hugh Hewitt – Rush Limbaugh did. Says Hewitt:

Rush Limbaugh’s overwhelmingly positive reaction to Mitt Romney’s speech –with compliments like Rush’s commentary, you don’t need a formal endorsement…

I think that applies to Dobson as well.

John Mark Reynolds does an excellent in-depth analysis of the speech for those inclined to go very deep. This post is a tour-de-force in what actually went into Romney writing this thing.

I came to prefer Romney to my second choice candidate (Huckabee), because I think him better prepared intellectually to be President. I like Mike and think he was an effective governor of a small state, but Mitt Romney was forced to confront the intellectual culture of Massachusetts.

Mitt Romney had to wrestle with the intersection of our (mostly) secular intellectual elite and the governance of a (mostly) religious nation.

David Brody, whom Lowell and I spoke to before The Speech, but not afterwards, sounds a great deal like we do:

The speech was sweeping, lofty and presidential. He looked natural and spoke passionately. Mitt Romney didn’t just look like a President today. He sounded and behaved like one too.

Lowell updates:

There is a torrent of commentary, as we expected. We are going to comment on the best and most significant of it.

Rich Lowry loved it:

At his worst, Romney has seemed a mere collection of political positions; in The Speech, he showed a core, a political soul. He partially wrote and then delivered a speech that was a deeply felt love poem to America, a defense and celebration of its religious vibrancy and world-shaping commitment to liberty. For this moment at least, the shrewd politician was replaced by the simple, unadorned patriot.

Romney will have a harder time dispelling doubts about his Mormonism than about his political character. Christians and secularists who consider Mormonism a cult whose adherents are unworthy of high political office won’t be moved by any speech. As for everyone else, what else do they need to know other than, as Romney put it, “When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God”?

I think that’s about right.

Who Didn’t Like It?

At The Corner, Lisa Schiffren points out what we have known here all along:

The joke about all of this is that, should he make it out of the primaries, Romney’s real religious problem is that he will be perceived as just another patrician, white, anglo-saxon, Protestant.

This illuminates strongly the fact that we Christian conservative have far more in common with Mormons on the socio-political level than we have differences. This is really born out in the early reactions to an off-schedule question at the “On Faith” site:

What did you think of Mitt Romney’s speech today about religion? What would you have told him to say?

We are currently about 22 hours after the speech and some more conservative responses to that question are starting to roll in, but the early response at that site were all of the “ban religion from the public square altogether” variety. The Boston Globe, in an unsigned editorial sounded similarly:

Romney got applause when he criticized those who would supplant a faith-centered nation with “the religion of secularism.” But given the amount of violence and intolerance that various religions have generated throughout history, it is unwise to insist that religious belief is a prerequisite for freedom.

Christopher Hitchens was, well, Christopher Hitchens:

Almost the only clever thing about Gov. Mitt Romney’s long-denied and long-delayed but obviously long-prepared “response” was its location at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, which allowed him to pose (prematurely, I’d say) in front of a presidential seal as well as a thicket of American flags. Composed chiefly of boilerplate, the windy speech raised the vexed question of the candidate’s religious affiliation—and thus broke the taboo on mentioning it—without setting to rest any of the difficulties that make it legitimate to raise the issue in the first place.

I read all of these and I begin to think Romney made a very wise decision in making this speech. What he did was draw the REAL religious battlelines in this election – between those of faith and the secular. As I listened to the speech I heard several lines that I knew many of my Evangelical brethren would pounce on, and I believe they still will – theonerds have to talk, but they have not been the first up to the plate here. All these initial reactions are political, not religious, and quite successfully political at that.

The only exception I have seen to date is Father John Morris on FOXNews:

But, I wouldn’t vote for a Mormon who sidesteps or otherwise obscures what the Mormon Church believes — especially as it differs from mainline Christianity—or who suggests that his unique religious belief would in no way affect his action.

Like I say, theo-nerds have to talk.

Other Takes…

The Wall Street Journal looks at Evangelical reaction and calls it mixed. As we noted yesterday, Romney was not out to win the theo-nerd vote, he was out to win the mainstream Republican vote. It is not hard to dig up contrarians in any circumstance.

Dennis Byrne says religion talk n politic has just gone too far generally. I think he is probably right, and I think with this speech, Romney has doen what he can to restore order to that conversation.

In Other Related News…

Huckabee Once Again Crosses The Line…

More apparent claims of Divine endorsement. Jim Geragthy:

Wow. Huckabee’s been endorsed by both Chuck Norris AND Jesus Christ

You know after Romney’s speech such claims seem more irritating that catastrophic, more relegated to the margins than the mainstream of political activity.

Lowell: Charles Krauthammer slams Huckabee hard. I think Huck deserves all this and more:

Huckabee has been asked about this view that Mormonism is a cult. He dodges and dances. “If I’m invited to be the president of a theological school, that’ll be a perfectly appropriate question,” he says, “but to be the president of the United States, I don’t know that that’s going to be the most important issue that I’ll be facing when I’m sworn in.”

Hmmm. So it is an issue, Huckabee avers. But not a very important one. And he’s not going to pronounce upon it. Nice straddle, leaving the question unanswered and still open — the kind of maneuver one comes to expect from slick former governors of Arkansas lusting for the presidency.

Ouch.  Update:  Huckabee responds, weakly, and Geraghty is  . . . unimpressed.

Finally…

Yours truly was quoted in Wired. Making the “big time” at a snails pace.

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