I do not dispute that, but I would love to know if there is historical evidence of that in elections in which the candidates, in states with a strong Southern Baptist constituency, were Presbyterian or one of the other disfavored religions that John listed.

Some defenders of the religious repudiation of Romney have cited the strong vote in Utah for Romney as evidence that Mormons also vote strongly in favor of a fellow Mormon.

I would dispute that. Mormons have of course voted for presidential candidates who were not Mormon since statehood. Utah has elected non-Mormon governors (Simon Bamberger was a Jew, J. Bracken Lee a generic Protestant) and a non-Mormon Senator (Thomas Kearns). The attempt by Mormon Orrin Hatch to run for president in 2000 aroused no significant support from his Utah constituents. And you can be sure that if Harry Reid was running for president, his being from neighboring Nevada and a Mormon would not do anything for the Republican Mormons.

Now of course, many Mormons in Utah did give financial support to Mormon Larry Echohawk when he was Idaho Attorney General running for governor of Idaho as a Democrat. His fund raising among Mormons in Utah was a handicap, added to his being a Democrat and an Indian, for many non-Mormons in Idaho.

Romney was a known quantity in Utah, a legitimate hero for saving the Olympics and turning an incipient disaster into a world-famous success. Compared to Romney, what had McCain or Huckabee ever done for Utah?

A study by political scientists showed that many of the people who justified their opposition to Romney on grounds that he was a “flip-flopper” were actually using that as an excuse to hide their religious antipathy. So I think that the religious motivations for opposing him were stronger than we would like to think. That does not mean that many Evangelicals did not decide to vote for him anyway. The fact that prominent Evangelicals endorse Romney is proof that many understood the difference between electing a president for the whole country–Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, etc.–and electing a pastor for your own church. But there is still a stubborn, significant minority who vote their prejudices.

I would like John to comment in more detail on the story told by Mr. Keating at The New Republic, that the Southern Baptist Convention was actively propagandizing against Mormons all through 2007, and that its December message was a warning that electing Romney would make Mormons “legitimate” and thus threaten to increase conversions to Mormonism. The SBC thus raised the stakes from control of the Executive Branch to the damnation of souls. “The White House might go to hell in a handbaslet, but heaven forbid that we allow Americans to go there because we elected a Mormon.”

The odd thing about that warning is that it is an admission that the more the world gets to know Romney, the more they will like his religion. That is not something that has been said about any other president. There are lots of historical articles and books about the effect of religion on specific presidents, especially Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. But I cannot think of ever seeing a book that discussed the effect that presidents had on the fortunes of a religion. Did the deists see an upsurge when Jefferson took office? Did Quakers get a bounce from Nixon?

If Mormonism is so inherently disgusting that people who look into it get more disgusted, shouldn’t Southern Baptists leaders WANT to elect Romney, so everyone in the world can see Mormons revealed as the (put in your favorite epithet here) that Baptists know them to be? Wouldn’t that single event do more to persuade people to stay away from Mormons and Mormonism?

In view of the religious xenophobia of the Southern baptists, as described by John, one can expect they will oppose the election of ANY Mormon to ANY political office even at the state level. Has that been true? My sense is that Representative Istook of Oklahoma, a Mormon who ran for governor, was defeated partyly due to such prejudice. So it appears that Mormons do not have the full rights of citizenship in predominantly Baptist states. They are apparently to be treated as dhimmi, second class citizens like Christians in Muslim countries.

That is a blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution and its guarantee of equality under the law. It appears that Baptists put the advancement of their religion above any principles taught in the US Constitution about equal justice. Which makes me wonder why they don’t come out of the closet and just form their own Baptist Party, so the rest of Republicans can choose a candidate without religion being a determining factor.

Romney will be the heir apparent, and now, McCain owes him a favor.

Something we won’t know in this election cycle is how much bias there would have been against Huckabee if he had been perceived as having a real shot at getting the nomination. I would suggest that, at least in the general election, criticism of him for his faith would have been every bit as extensive as it would have been for Romney.

To the militantly secular, to the Bill Mahers of the world, for example, being Mormon is probably no better nor worse than being a Southern Baptist or a serious Catholic. But to those who don’t immediately put down the religious, there are some issues where an evangelical such as Huckabee would raise more concern than a Mormon would.

Here are a few instances: 1) The Mormon church has been relatively nonpolitical in recent decades; not so with many evangelical churches. 2) While Mormons have their quirky (to outsiders) beliefs, you don’t see the LDS church trying to rewrite science textbooks in the way that many evangelicals have tried to. 3) As a literal article of faith, Mormons believe that people should be able to worship God as they see fit, but there is a segment of evangelicalism that approaches favoring theocracy. 4) Many evangelicals believe that people who don’t believe as they do will burn in hell, raising questions about how well an evangelical president might deal with diversity. But Mormons are semi-universalistic and find much good in other religions. 5) Mormons place a high value on free will (agency), giving an LDS politician some cover for stating that he/she wouldn’t try to impose views on other people. 6) Southern Baptist (for example) statements on the role of women would probably be more threatening to many than the LDS Proclamation on the Family, which says nothing about wives submitting to their husbands. 7) The LDS church has had a relatively moderate position on issues such as abortion and stem cell research compared with the “pro-life” movement.

I’m not saying this to berate evangelicals — I come from a family of them! All I’m saying is that in a general election a Mormon very well may have no worse of a time handling religious biases than a hard-core evangelical would.