Tributes…

K-Lo on women, Romney and the “too perfect” meme.

And I’ll go one step further. I worry about a political culture that is a little too suspicious of a scandal-less, all-American-gee-whiz-this-is-the-American-dream-in-overdrive package. We should be glad that good people — who, while well-off, are not without their share of painful crosses — are willing to subject themselves to the ugliness that politics can inflict. We should be grateful that good families will make the sacrifices necessary to serve — and make those sacrifices with no guarantees they’ll succeed. (Now that even Hillary Clinton has proven to be vulnerable, we know there are really no guarantees!)

Mitt Romney has money, smarts, support, and a loyal staff. He’ll be fine. But the rest of us will have, someday, to face up to the consequences of a culture of political cynicism.

Matt Lewis on “Hero’s Journey:

If you’ve read Arthur or the Odyssey — or have seen Star Wars or Rocky — you are familiar with the idea. Before reaching the “promised land,” a hero must first endure his “wilderness years.” This is essentially a right of passage or initiation (I’ve written that Mitt Romney finally passed his “Initiation” into the conservative movement.)

Did somebody say “wilderness years?” And it is Reagan’s example? Uh . . . . Anybody ever hear of Richard Nixon? Lord I am feeling old . . . .

Analysis . . .

Dan Gilgoff in USAToday interviews Nancy French about why Evangelicals did not flock to Romney. The conclusion is because Evangelical leaders refused to lead. Interesting, but not politically wise. Leadership is flimsy stuff, one can only lead people as far as they are willing to go. If one pushes one’s constituency too much in a direction it does not want to go, one finds oneself alone and no longer a leader.

James Dobson, who receives particular ire in the piece, and has made any number of mistakes in this thing, cannot be blamed for this one. Bringing up the Mormon issue openly was for him a no-win situation. In the past when Dobson did reach out to Mormons he was pilloried by some in his camp. Now he is getting pilloried by others for failing to do so. In such circumstance one must either keep one’s mouth shut, or be willing to lose a lot. If Dobson has a problem, it is that he said too much at the wrong time.

Nope, the anti-Mormon problems in the republican party are at a deeper level than Evangelical leadership - much deeper. There is a lot of hard work that needs to be done at a “grass roots” level to sort this one out.

Lowell inserts: I agree and disagree with those last two paragraphs. This is a fundamental grass-roots issue, no doubt about it. I am, however, less willing to give Dr. Dobson a pass on this one. He is a leader and needs to be out in front of those he leads. If we are saying that he could not encourage Evangelicals to look past Romney’s Mormonism for fear of upsetting his members, then we are also saying he’s a captive of his membership. To me, that makes him seem more like a talk show host concerned about his ratings than a leader of a movement.

John responds: Ahem - Dobson is a radio show host… That’s where his base comes from.

Lowell:  Touché, sort of.  Dobson’s show is not on any AM station in L.A. (if it is, it’s well-hidden), so I do not hear it, and I am not alone.  He speaks to a certain narrow listenership, and when he is interviewed on Laura Ingraham’s show, for example, he is not interviewed as a talk show host, he’s interviewed as Mr. Focus on The Family, whose  web site appeals to readers to “support the ministry.”  If he’s a talk show host, then so is Jesse Jackson! 

To be fair to Dobson, he’s like a politician. He can only get away with so much (see the candidates’ positions on immigration, for example). That he can’t get away with saying positive things about Romney says more about the state of his constituency than anything. But he is not a man of courage. He will not risk alienating his supporters, without whom  he is nothing.

Mormons are thinking . . .

An interesting article out of, of all places, Fort Wayne, Indiana, interviews local, and not-so local Mormons for their thoughts and editorializes a bit.

This is the nub of it, really. Romney seemed so Mormon, so squeaky clean. Maybe we understand better those who’ve strayed or failed and recovered – or, for that matter, those who aren’t fabulously successful and can’t put tens of millions into their own campaigns. Maybe we relate to the family lives of other candidates, candidates who have been divorced, who have blended families.

I am not at all sure how to react to that. There was a bit of the “too perfect” stuff and that is associated with Mormonism, but let’s think rationally about this for a minute. The flip side of anti-Mormon bias is polygamy, which is, to the average American terribly unseemly. These comments also represent a lack of exposure to Mormons on a large scale, because, like with any group, I have known some really good ones, and some utter and complete jerks.

I guess, if people don’t like Mormons, they just don’t like them, rationality has left the room.

Sadly, Huck Still Needs To Be Hammered . . .

John Mark Reynolds lists five reason Huck should get out now! Reason #5:

You are harming Evangelicals by only getting their votes and forcing them into a ghetto.

HEY! That sounds familiar. Although “USnooze,” he said stealing from Rush Limbaugh, seems to think he is just rending Evangelicalism asunder. But then the MSM never could tell the difference between Evangelicalism, the Emerging Church, and mainstream denominationalism.

But, typically, Laura Ingraham, in conversation with Byron York, points out that Huckabee seems obsessed with Romney, insisting on taking shots long after Romney has left the race. Not to mention that the shot he takes is one designed to play into the “Mormons lie” meme. People very close to the campaign tell me that Huck is not motivated by anti-Mormon sentiment, but I am not seeing much in his public behavior that belies my suspicions.

This Catholic is suspicious of Huckabee and fears similar anti-Catholic stratagems to the anti-Mormons ones used in Iowa. Alas, that which I most feared is appearing. Serious damage, created by Huckabee’s strategy, has been done.

Getting It Wrong . . .

Yet another in the never ending series of atheistic rants when it comes to religion and politics. I wonder when atheists are going to figure out that what they have is NOT the absence of religion but religion of a different type? They are people of faith just like the rest of us, just not faith in God.

Stanley Fish tries to justify identity politics. What is interesting is he justifies it on the basis of the issues, reducing identity to a shortcut for “vote like me.” Except the shortcut cannot be relied upon and no identity group is sufficiently large to carry the day. In the end he has said nothing.

Background…

A very interesting Jewish perspective in a Muslim venue.

Andrew Ferguson on Lincoln and religion.

Polling Evangelicals.
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It’s Friday and with Romney out of the race, it is time to lighten up just a bit.

First of all read “coMITTed to Romney” as they forward a letter from John Cleese.

Then watch the video below - it is an absolute classic:

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
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One of the primary jobs we have had on this blog is to seek and highlight instances of anti-Mormon sentiment and bigotry throughout the Romney campaign. It is very real and it was very effective, and it was wrong. Lowell and I both acknowledge that is was a factor in the campaign. There will be much work for this blog in the future trying to get, as best we can with our limited and non-academic resources, a handle as to how big and how effective a factor it was.

But there is also an important question about how to move things forward from here. One of the things that I am most concerned about both for my Evangelical brethren and my Mormon friends is relegating ourselves to separate, but equally isolated political “ghettos.”

Frankly, I think the perceived ghettoization of Evangelicals goes a long way to explain Huckabee and I fear that too much emphasis on “Mitt lost because he was a Mormon” runs the risk of creating a similar self-fulfilling perception for Mormons who are just now in the process of moving out of an actual imposed ghetto - The Jello Belt. I think this accounts for the difference in viewpoint and emphasis that Lowell and I bring to the question we have been discussing.

To give this a complete view I want to look at three basic concerns: 1) Blacks and The Self-Fulfilling Ghetto; 2) The Perceived Evangelical Ghetto, and 3) The Potential Mormon Ghetto

Blacks and The Self-Fulfilling Ghetto

I recently heard Los Angeles Talk Radio Host Larry Elder discuss his new book with Sean Hannity. His book is entitled “Stupid Black Men: How To Play The Race Card - and Lose.” Here is the Amazon description:

Radio host and bestselling author Larry Elder has made a career out of being a thorn-in-the-side of the conventional wisdom crowd. He deflates the pompous and points out the completely logical truths hidden behind the nutty rhetoric and out-of-control pandering of many of the politicians and so-called leaders of a variety of special interest groups. In Stupid Black Men, he takes on the mind-set that always captures the most media attention—as well as masses of public money—in this country: those who rail against racism as the root of all problems, and who end up hurting precisely those they claim to be helping.

His sometimes hilarious and always infuriating examples of wrong-headedness skewer not just politicians for their smugness and hypocrisy, but also actors, educators, religious leaders and the “mainscream media” for keeping the story in the headlines.

But Elder has a positive message, too: though they are fewer—and generally not as loud-mouthed—there are leaders and role models today who want to sweep away race-based whining and urge everyone in America, to share in the hard work, smart thinking and optimism that make this country great. [Emphasis added.]

The fact of the matter is that for blacks a continued reliance on the politics of race has kept them segregated and denied them the piece of the American Dream they deserve because they demand it rather than earn it. There was a time when blacks were denied even the opportunity to earn, but that time is past.

This is the thing about America - everything is earned. As a democracy we removed the hereditary right to rule - you must earn your place in leadership in this nation. We cannot produce equality of result, we can only produce equality if opportunity, this means we must earn the rest.

Which brings me to . . .

The Perceived Evangelical Ghetto

In the early days of blogging, God bloggers often complained of existing in a “blogging ghetto.” By that they meant they all read each other, but none of them ever broke out an became the next High Hewitt or Instapundit, or Michelle Malkin, or…. That very sentiment carried with it the presumption that someone should have broken out. I never understood the complaint, to be frank.

Christianity Today has no where near the circulation of Time or Newsweek. It never will - it can’t - because it has a specific identity and exists in that niche, and that niche is of limited size. The newsweeklies exist in a much larger niche and therefore have a larger circulation.

The problem is simple, when all you do is hang around with people who are like you and talk about stuff only you all are interested in, you create a ghetto. Is that ghetto imposed on you? Not really, its just that no one else cares about what you care about so much. In such a circumstance you have two choices, really. One start talking about other things so that more and other people will want to join the conversation, or somehow change other people so they want to talk about what you are talking about.

In the case of evangelical political activity, tough as it is to believe, not everyone is as strident on abortion and defense of marriage as we are. We are abortion absolutists, most people are not, they want limits, but not banishment. So, how do we get out of this political ghetto? Well, we can expand our interests to join the rest of the party and thus, by virtue of joining the conversation, be better heard (provided we make our arguments in language other than the language of our ghetto), or we can evangelize the world to be Christians so they think the same as we do. In actuality the answer is probably some of both, but that is not my point. My point is that we stay in the ghetto by virtue of our behavior, by clinging to our evangelical identity above all else.

Mike Huckabee has not helped in this regard at all. His protestations nothwithstanding, - he can even try to play the victim but - Huckabee played to the ghetto. His supporters in many cases were even worse. The problem is exacerbated by how many of us there are. Just enough to have influence, but not enough to carry the day. Huckabee with his cries of “establishment” played to the perception of the ghetto and did so in a way that encouraged us to remain in it rather than break out of it. (Not to mention his getting personal gain from it as we languished.)

Through all this, we not find ourselves at best wallflowers, if not outside of the dance altogether. Evangelicals have to make some choices. We have to broaden our message or we will be stuck in the ghetto, powerless and taken for granted, exactly what Huck claimed to want to save us from.

The Potential Mormon Ghetto

Mormons historically had ghetto imposed on them through persecution, but they have spent the last 130 years or so trying to move back into the mainstream of America. Mormon are idiosyncratic, but then as Martin Marty points out, aren’t we all. There is little doubt that those idiosyncracies were used to trigger old resentments and that hurt the Romney campaign in some places and with some people. The question, as we have said over and over and over, is how many people, how effectively?

Well, in one sense, the answer makes no difference.  If people keep claiming that it was all about Romney’s faith, like this student, or this newspaper, or this magazine (even with contrary opinion in the mag’s blog) then the Mormons run the risk of a new, but still self-imposed, ghetto such as blacks have built a whole culture upon, and Evangelicals now risk doing the same.

As when this all started, Evangelicals and Mormons find themselves with far more in common than they have differences. Their political effectiveness at serious risk.

What To Do?

Look at the Larry Elder book blurb above again - What is Elder’s advice to blacks:

…sweep away race-based whining and urge everyone in America, to share in the hard work, smart thinking and optimism that make this country great. [Emphasis added.]

That is, I think good advice for Mormons and Evangelicals.

What we need to do is to grow more sophisticated - to learn better how to do politics. We need to develop a message that appeals to the majority of the American people, but we need to develop it with out giving up our distinctives, our idiosyncracies, or our uniqueness. We can do this. Thomas Sowell or Larry Elder or Ward Connerly did not stop being black when they joined the mainstream of American political and cultural thought; the only people that think so are those who are afraid to leave the ghetto.

We can remain abortion absolutists, for example, but we must be open-minded enough to accept limits as a step in the right direction. But we can only take even those steps if we leave our ghettos and join the party. We are going to be stuck in our ghettos if we keep pointing fingers at each other and naming names. But we can leave our ghettos together by finding our common ground.

This is the reason I am unwilling to grant that the elephant to which Lowell refers is “huge.” If I think that, then I think it is too big to move and I have to stay stuck here in this ghetto. I am not interested in that. I am interested in either moving it out of the way or walking around it. I don’t want to focus on the elephant, I want to focus on the end of the journey.

Lowell adds:  I hesitate to tread on John’s well-written and thoughtful post, which I agree with almost 100%, but this seems the best place to contribute (I hope) to the discussion.

I still think the elephant is huge, but as John correctly observes, what’s really important is what we do about it.  For Mormons, the teachings of our church could not be clearer.  Here are excerpts from a letter read in every Mormon sacrament meeting (the main meeting of the Sunday worship services) in the United States:

“We wish to reiterate the divine counsel that members ‘should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness’ (D&C 58:27) while using gospel principles as a guide and while cooperating with other like-minded individuals. . . .

“Therefore, as in the past, we urge members of the Church to be full participants in political, governmental, and community affairs. Members of the Church are under special obligations to seek out and then uphold those leaders who are wise, good, and honest (see D&C 98:10).

“Thus, we strongly urge men and women to be willing to serve on school boards, city and county councils and commissions, state legislatures, and other high offices of either election or appointment, including involvement in the political party of their choice.

“While the Church does not endorse political candidates, platforms, or parties, members are counseled to study the candidates carefully and vote for those individuals they believe will act with integrity and in ways conducive to good communities and good government. Hence, political candidates are asked not to imply that their candidacy is endorsed by the Church or its leaders.

“As always, Church facilities may not be used for political purposes, nor Church directories or mailing lists.”

I have been hearing almost those same words regularly all my adult life.  It seems to me that for Mormons to retreat in to the “ghetto” mentality to which John refers is contrary to the teachings and beliefs of our church.  So John’s counsel (in Larry Elder’s words, to “sweep away . . . whining and urge everyone in America, to share in the hard work, smart thinking and optimism that make this country great”) describe exactly what Mormons should be doing.  I can’t see any reason why Evangelicals should not be doing the same thing. 

At the same time, there are clearly Evangelicals in this country who don’t want to see Mormons serving on “school boards, city and county councils and commissions, state legislatures, and other high offices of either election or appointment.” I don’t know what Mormons can do about that except keep trying, and keep extending the hand of friendship and common cause to those who may disagree with us on religious matters.  Evangelicals have some work to do on increasing their brethren’s willingness to accept those efforts.
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Usually when we say there is “an elephant in the room,” we are referring to a big, obvious issue that no one wants to acknowledge. But the pachyderm I’m talking about is different. We have taken to calling him The Question.

Almost everyone not only sees that elephant, but also admits he’s there– and no one seems reluctant to talk about him.

What we don’t agree on is this: Just how big is that elephant?

I think he’s huge. John, I’m guessing, thinks he’s a little smaller.

The Discussion

My statement of two days ago is the topic of the running debate– discussion, really– that John and I have been having:

I continue to believe that if Mitt Romney were a deeply religious Evangelical Presbyterian, with the same resume, he’d be the presumptive Republican nominee right now, way ahead of McCain, with Huckabee not even in the race. Why? Because Huck would not have been the “values voter” (meaning Evangelical) alternative to Romney. He never would have taken off in Iowa, conservatives would have flocked to Romney, and the entire narrative of this race would be different.

John concedes that as “a creedal Christian, of any stripe, Mitt Romney would have produced a very different narrative to the primaries,” but believes that Romney still would not have been “a sure thing.”

No argument from me there. I simply believe (and I think John agrees, for the most part) that the elephant in the room — Romney’s religion– was a huge factor that changed everything. Would he be the nominee without that factor in play? Maybe not. But the entire race would have been different.

The Unpleasant Truth

As I’ve written here before, during this Republican presidential campaign something very ugly arose. It manifested itself in various ways. Here are just a few examples:

• Mike Huckabee’s now infamous question about whether Mormons believe Jesus and Satan as brothers. What if Huckabee had said, “Don’t Catholics believe Mary and Jesus are co-redeemers of mankind?” He would not have dared say such a thing - and maybe that’s my point. But if he had, The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and similar organizations, would have been all over him. There is no “Mormon League.”
• The official web site of a mainstream candidate for President of the United States (Huckabee again) included comments like, “we cannot stand for this Mormon garbage to get into office.” Insert the word “Jewish” or “Catholic” or “”black” in that sentence for “Mormon” and ask yourself if a hue and cry would not have arisen in response to such statements. But no hue and cry arose, and the candidate left those comments — and links to viciously anti-Mormon web sites - up on his own official site.
• Someone named Joel Belz wrote an essay in World Magazine, a leading Evangelical publication, stating that Mormons as a group generally lie, and that Romney’s so-called “flip-flops” could be attributed to that Mormon tendency. What if Belz — or anyone, for that matter — had argued that “Jews steal,” and therefore Joseph Lieberman could not be trusted with control of the U.S. Treasury? You’re right, that’s unimaginable.
•  A clearly on-the-fringe minister in Florida with an apparently large following makes headlines by saying “a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan.”  Most respectable journalists probably didn’t want to call attention to this man’s rantings, but I have never seen a single denunciation of this nonsense from any leading journalist or religious figure.

The unpleasant and undeniable fact is that in the United States today it is still possible to get away with making statements about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that simply would not be tolerated regarding any other religious group.

Another unpleasant and undeniable fact is that by and large, such statements are not loudly and vigorously denounced, but get at most a sad shake of the head from observers who ought to be outraged.

That’s the true size of the elephant in our room.

Spotting the Idiots

I am not accustomed to playing the role of victim. My faith does not teach that approach to life, and I do not believe in it.  Also, like Glenn Reynolds, I believe that free speech makes it easier to “spot the idiots. ” It sure is easy in this case.

But we need to do more than spot them.

One personal note:  That the candidate who had to bear the brunt of this storm of bigotry is the most decent man I have ever seen run for national office makes the situation all the more galling.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Lest anyone think I am all “doom and gloom” about this situation, the contrary is true.  I think the Romney candidacy shines a spotlight on this remaining bit of accepted bigotry.  I really think it will get better.  Not overnight, but sooner than it would have otherwise.

Who knows?  Maybe Romney will run again in 2012, if McCain is not elected, and maybe in the next 3-4 years he can do some more work on convincing people that his faith ought not to be a barrier to his presidential hopes.  Maybe he’ll have the luxury of getting a little feisty about the issue, like he did with that Iowa radio show host Jan Mickelson (video here).

One thing’s for sure:  The discussion will never be the same.  And that’s a good thing.
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Yesterday, Lowell asserted:

I continue to believe that if Mitt Romney were a deeply religious Evangelical Presbyterian, with the same resume, he’d be the presumptive Republican nominee right now, way ahead of McCain, with Huckabee not even in the race. Why? Because Huck would not have been the “values voter” (meaning Evangelical) alternative to Romney. He never would have taken off in Iowa, conservatives would have flocked to Romney, and the entire narrative of this race would be different.

I will not and cannot deny that a creedal Christian, of any stripe, Mitt Romney would have produced a very different narrative to the primaries, but it would far from make him a sure thing. There are any number of reasons and I will discuss a few here.

Evangelical Discontent

Throughout the entire second W. term that has been growing discontent amongst Evangelicals with the Republican party. It is born of an apparent lack of progress on the Evangelical issues, primarily abortion and defense of marriage. Any Republican candidate perceived to be the “establishment” Republican candidate was, and is, in trouble. We see this in Huckabee’s continued acquisition of Evangelical votes, even with Romney gone, and his own status of mathematical impossibility. There has been a revolt brewing for a while.

Iowa Is Nuts

Pat Robertson won Iowa. Howard Dean won Iowa. Iowa is often not predictive, and often, in the Republican caucuses goes seriously religious. Even a creedal Christian Romney would be out “religioned” by a Huckabee, he was a pastor after all. Romney needed Iowa, or New Hampshire, to start the ball rolling, that much is true - but he lost New Hampshire as well, and those people pay no attention to religion. The momentum strategy lost on more fronts that just religion.

Romney’s shot at catch-up after those first two was probably better absent the Mormon factor, but he was still going to be playing catch-up, a risky proposition.

Rudy’s Stumble

Rudy was conservative, but not socially so. He was supposed to coalesce the conservative vote, absent the social conservatives, and then Romney would appear a better alternative since he had some social alternative appeal, and would thus complete the three-legged stool and prevail. But Rudy’s coalescence of the economic and national defense conservatives was necessary for Romney to be able to seal the deal with the social conservatives. As it was, Rudy was a non-factor and that coalescence never occurred. Even if a non-Mormon Romney could have captured social conservatives early, without the coming together of the other two legs, the moderates were going to drive through the hole in the line and sack the quarterback. Otherwise, Huckabee would be at least close, if not winning right now.

This is a conservative loss, not just a religious one.

Never Underestimate Southern Baptist Judgementalism

For better or worse, Evangelicalism is dominated by the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, there are very reasonable and good Southern Baptists - but as a generalization, they condemn not only Mormons, but Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and as my denomination, Presbyterian, moves increasingly leftward, we too become victims of Baptist judgment.

This attitude makes “one of their own” about the only acceptable alternative, particularly in light of the brewing rebellion discussed above. They feel like they have compromised with the areligious (Reagan and Bush I) and the differently religious (Bush II) have have not gotten anywhere. It was going to be one of theirs or it was not going to be at all. A Mitt Romney that was anything other than SBC, particularly with an SBC alternative in the race (Huckabee), was going to lose with social conservatives.

California and Gerrymandering

I think Romney would still be in and fighting today had he managed to at least split the difference with McCain in California on Super Tuesday - and the polls certianly indicated that he should have.   However, with congressional district assignment of delegates, combined with congressional districts gerrymandered to favor Democrats, Romney left California almost empty-handed.

The new California primary system is a huge blow to conservatism in general and it has little or nothing to do with religion.  A strong Rudy probably would not have faired much better in the Golden State.

Now, again, a non-Mormon Romney would have had a huge effect on the interplay of these factors and things would have gone very, very differently, but a non-Mormon Romney would still be far from a sure thing.
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Lowell and I have sort of shifted into a lower gear with Governor Romney’s withdrawal from the race, but there has been much written in the wake. We have addressed in individual posts what we consider to be the most important things, but it is time for a post just to catch up on the breadth of what has been written.

The Consensus Post-Mortem?

…is that Romney’s faith was a factor in his withdrawal, but not necessarily determinative. Such is the opinion of:

• K-Lo
• E.J. Dionne (on Religion and Ethics Weekly)

Orange County’s Frank Mickadeit wonders if was not more important than the conventional wisdom would hold out. As does a SLTrib columnist, and one of their writers.

EFM’s Nancy French, with her southern perspective, expresses her frustration at the “silent, but perhaps deadly” nature of the anti-Mormon sentiment.

But Peter Keeting, writing in the New Republic, writes the story that is going to be drummed throughout the left, and likely will be for a long time to some:

For the conservative pundits backing Romney who missed this story, ideology trumps theology. But for many evangelicals, it’s the other way around. Southern Baptists and Mormons are not only two of the four largest religious denominations in the country, they are the most aggressive of American missionary faiths, and have been on a collision course for generations.

And so it begins with the left using Romney’s withdrawal as a cudgel with which they will beat Evangelicals over and over and over again. As I have said over and over and over again, if you oppose Romney you need to make it entirely clear that it was not on the basis of religion, or else we will be pilloried if he does not succeed. But, of course, as the last conservative alternative standing, with his asides and unofficial allies and plausibly deniable religious attacks Huck has made that almost impossible.

It is so bad in fact, that those unofficial Huck allies are still Romney bashing, even though he is out. Classless, simply classless.

We have a lot of work in front of us.

The Mormon Reaction!?!?!?

Lowell has written about it already on Saturday and Sunday, but if sheer word count matters, the Mormon perspective on Romney’s withdrawal matters much more than the Evangelical one - something I find completely fascinating. Now, that does not mean I am insensitive to the pain I know my Mormon friends are feeling, but I really did thought the MSM would pounce if it happened to attempt to beat Evangelical out of existence. Of course, they may be working on it…

I will leave commentary on the Mormon reaction to those far more qualified than I, I simply link:

• WSJ
• WaPo
• Newsweek
• Jan Shipps in the SLTrib

The Future

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution looks at the meetings Romney has had in the wake of his withdrawal and concludes that his current journey appears to be Reaganesque as he seeks to become the “face of conservatism.” No deeply religious individual, Reagan was adored by the Religious Right, but Reagan’s lack of faith made him a religious neutral, while Romney is a religious competitor. This will be interesting.

Lowell adds: I continue to believe that if Mitt Romney were a deeply religious Evangelical  Presbyterian, with the same resume, he’d be the presumptive Republican nominee right now, way ahead of McCain, with Huckabee not even in the race.  Why?  Because Huck would not have been the “values voter” (meaning Evangelical) alternative to Romney.   He never would have taken off in Iowa, conservatives would have flocked to Romney, and the entire narrative of this race would be different.  So I disagree with everyone who seems so eager to say Romney’s Mormonism was only one of many factors, but not determinative.  Yes, his faith was one of many factors, but it was by far the largest and most significant factor.  Change that factor, and everything else changes as well.

That’s my story, folks, and I’m stickin’ to it! 
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