Read the entire article at:

http://mittromney.townhall.com

While there is much blaming of Huckabee personally and Evangelical Christians more generally for Romney’s failure among LDS people right now, my personal view is that–agreeing with Lowell, I think–the difficulty that Romney had in getting traction in the early going and even the Huckabee phenomenon (and even his ability to exploit the Mormon issue among as broad a part of Evangelicals as he has) is due very much in large part by the incessant drum-beat of The Question, both in the mainstream media, and among the political punditry (published and on-line) over since the inception of Romney’s campaign as so thoroughly documented by A6Blog over the past two years.

“Of course on cultural issues there is little question that Latter- day Saints are closer to the ‘orthodox’ right than the ‘progressive’ left. Latter-day Saint beliefs and practices include a traditional allocation of gender roles within a two-parent family, a moral code that forbids all extramarital sexual relations, a law of health that prohibits consumption of coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs, and doctrinal declarations that oppose abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Virtually all of
these Latter-day Saint attitudes and practices are shared with other conservative Christians. ‘A moralism that rejects social and individual permissiveness,’ concludes one study, ‘is where Mormons and conservative Christians stand on common ground.’

“Nevertheless Hunter’s interpretation of the sources of cultural conflict oversimplifies the political relationship of Latter-day Saints to other conservative Christians especially conservative Protestants. Notwithstanding their similar cultural attitudes, Latter-day Saints and conservative Christians are divided on at least three important issues. First, Latter-day Saints have a historically shaped consciousness of the precariousness of minority religious status, a consciousness that is not generally shared by conservative Christians in the United States. Second, their radically different understanding of Christianity makes Latter-day Saints a target of criticism and attacks by more ‘orthodox’ Christians especially fundamentalist and Evangelical
Protestants. Finally, in contrast to the resurgence of conservative Christian activism in the last two decades, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an institution has remained largely apolitical since the 1960s. The first two of these differences actually place Latter-day Saints as
close to the cultural left as to the cultural right, if not closer, while the last places Latter-day Saints outside of the culture war paradigm altogether. All of them suggest that Latter-day Saints should not be uncritically grouped with conservative Christians on cultural issues.”

I think Prof. Gedicks is reaching a bit on the last of his points, particularly given the evidence of voting patterns amount the LDS since at least 1980. But the narrative of Mormons as “the other” has certainly played out in this election cycle in many, many ways.

Among the LDS right now there is a lot of blaming Huckabee personally and Evangelical Christians more generally for the failure of the Romney campaign. I agree with John that view is much oversimplified. On the other hand, Lowell’s statement has much truth to it–not primarily because of the Evangelical voting phenomenon, but because of the drum-beat of the press on The Question–as so thoroughly documented by A6Blog for the past two years–that has dogged Romney from the outset of his campaign (the effect of which, in relation to the early frontrunners, and others, is impossible to measure), and ultimately set up the identity politics that Huckabee’s campaign, and especially his surrogates, exploited to split the social conservative vote. It is not unreasonable to believe, as Lowell does, that Romney would have gained traction much earlier absent the incessant pounding of The Question. The fact that Huckabee’s religious angle still seems mostly to be getting a pass from the press only tends to validate the view, IMO.