Dear readers:

This will be a fast-moving, often-changing story over the next five days (five days!) between now and the New Hampshire primary election.  We’ll try to follow the important developments, and so should you.

Reports are that a group of “conservative elites” is meeting in Texas “to huddle to stop Mitt Romney.”

A group of movement conservatives has called an emergency meeting in Texas next weekend to find a “consensus” Republican presidential hopeful, POLITICO has learned.

“You and your spouse are cordially invited to a private meeting with national conservative leaders of faith at the ranch of Paul and Nancy Pressler near Brenham, Texas, with the purpose of attempting to unite and to come to a consensus on which Republican presidential candidate or candidates to support, or which not to support,” read an invitation that is making its way into in-boxes Wednesday morning.

The meeting is being hosted by such prominent conservative figures as James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Don Wildmon, onetime chairman of the American Family Association; and Gary Bauer, himself a former presidential candidate….

Movement conservatives are concerned that a vote split between Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum among base voters could enable Mitt Romney to grab the GOP nomination. A source who shared the invitation said the meeting was about how to avoid such a possibility….

If Republicans are going to put up a “pro-family conservative against Mitt Romney, some decisions need to be made,” [former gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaatts],told reporters at a Santorum rally.

This has a certain odor to it, especially in light of the key players identified.  James Dobson, Don Wildmon, Gary Bauer — Evangelicals all.  Wildmon has been strident in his opposition to Romney.  Dobson has been famously wishy-washy and in thrall to his base– but that may have changed  now that he has retired and  no longer needs their financial support.  (Or does he?)

For his part, Gary Bauer says the Texas meeting “was not intended to be a strategy session for how to take down Romney,” and that he will drop out of the event if he turned out to be wrong about its purpose.

Not all invitees agree with Bauer, however:

One conservative who was invited, though, said [stopping Romney] was exactly what the group ought to be doing.

“It’s what they should have done in 2008 with McCain, but they were too weak,” complained this conservative.

This meeting requires very close scrutiny. If this group is out to “stop the Mormon,” that purpose ought to be out in the open for all to see.

John Joins…

It will be very interesting to see if this veers off after Perry has announced he is still in.  Vander Plaats is also an anti-Mormon type of those cited.

The biggest problem we have right now is telling the difference between anti-Mormon sentiment and simple anti-Romney sentiment and how they relate.  The left, which wants to delegitimize religion generally, thinks it’s all about religion – examples here and here.  Conservatives, not wanting to appear religiously bigoted, say it is about “genuine conservatism” – example here.  Really smart lefties are playing into the later because they want Obama re-elected more than anything else.

But there are some things that are increasingly hard to understand.  The professionals, Karl Rove chief among them, now think Romney is going to be very hard to beat in the primary.  If that is indeed the case, and they are the best there are at this kind of stuff, why does there even need to be a question asked about whom to support?  When a winner becomes apparent, you back the winner because that is how you can be most effective at making gains with your particular agenda.  And that is true even if you do not agree entirely with the apparent winner, if your agenda matters most to you – then you go where you can make your agenda matter.  So, at this point, if they want to stop Romney, then that must be their most pressing agenda item – why?

Some argue that in Iowa “Family values” is code for “Christian values.“  And it would appear that such code excludes individuals with the same values, but different theology.  Santorum won the rural areas and Romney the cities; the data are now in.  Santorum, as I predicted, took the vast majority of the Evangelical vote.  Position by position, there is little difference between Santorum and Romney – save two.  Romney is so much better organized and so much better funded that there is no comparison.  That translates into electability.  And then there is the matter of ecclesiastical affiliation.  Even if no one will say it out loud, the statistics speak volumes.  And draw ridicule:

Has there ever been a clearer gap between a candidate’s claim of a divine call toward politics and Michele Bachmann’s speech on Wednesday ending her race for the GOP presidential nomination?

She started with a long list of arguments against the healthcare reform law (several of which had long ago failed muster against actual facts.) She added a smidge of humility of the sort not generally found among active candidates. (“And so last night, the people of Iowa spoke with a very clear voice, and so I have decided to stand aside.”)

And then there was this clear nod to her faith: “I look forward to the next chapter in God’s plan. He has one for each of us, you know. If we will only cooperate with him, he always had something greater around the corner — far beyond what any of us have ever thought or imagined.”

But she seemed far less uncertain about God’s plan for her when she entered the race. Ditto for her fellow failed (or nearly failed) candidates Herman Cain and Rick Perry. And for the latest non-Romney favorite, Rick Santorum.

Cast your eyes back to 2006 when Bachmann said: “God then called me to run for the United States Congress.” And then last year, just before starting her presidential campaign: “It means I have a sense of assurance about the direction I think that God is speaking into my heart that I should go.”

This does nothing but discredit the voice of faith in the public square – it portrays a God of steadfastness and reason as one of capricious whim.  If we are to prevail in the real battles ahead, we can ill afford such portrayals.  I find it fascinating that the follower of the faith MOST steeped in direct deistic revelation is making no claims to such when so many of his opponents are.

Same-sex marriage, the current most active battlefront, looks to get much more active.  We are doing stupid things on that battlefront and sometimes we get what we deserve, but forget how high the stakes really are – From Robert George:

One of my superstar former students, writing about his experience at one of our nation’s premier law schools, sent me a note after reading my MOJ post on marriage, religious liberty, and the “grand bargain.”  Here is the text, with names removed to protect the innocent:

I had a first-hand experience with this reality in law school. One of my constitutional law professors taught the section of our course relating to same-sex marriage under the “inevitability” banner. I met with him in office hours later to talk to him about something else, but I brought up a question that I have been wrestling with: if the SSM advocates are right and opposition to SSM becomes analogous to racism in our society, what will happen to Catholics and others whose views on SSM cannot and will not change? Are they to be excluded from public office, political and judicial appointments, or places of trust and responsibility within private institutions (e.g., law firm partnerships)? I posed the question to him because I was curious to hear his response, since he is generally a kind and reasonable person who seemed open to other viewpoints.

His response was very disappointing, and it shook my confidence in him. He responded to me by saying something along the lines of: “Well, they [Catholics and others] will either have to change their views or be treated in the same way that white supremacists and the segregationist Senators were treated. They were excluded from the judiciary entirely for decades because of the South’s views on race.”

The stakes are as high as they come.  The agitation for precisely those stakes is upon us.  The Republican nominee now appears very likely, very likely indeed, to be Mitt Romney.  He won the most religiously tinged, save perhaps South Carolina, primary in the nation.  The voters get it. We cannot let our theological differences keep us from winning the big fight.  That means we have to concentrate on electability and not theology.  A theology fight weakens our nominee, regardless of who that might be.  If the smart people think that nominee is Romney, the choice is most apparent.  Anything else and we, as they say, “Cut off our nose to spite our face.”

John Mark here:

For those wondering how traditional Christians will be treated in the future, I urge you to Google Santorum’s name. Santorum doesn’t deserve to be President for the hate he has received, but he deserves our thanks for putting up with it.

Meanwhile, he has too little money, too much baggage (those Senate votes! that election loss!), and a generally prickly personality.

Why not support Romney? There are good reasons not to do so, I suppose, but bad ones too. When a thoughtful blogger like Andrew Sullivan calls a man “weird,” then he is giving a dog whistle to hate. Don’t believe me? Read the comment sections on blogs that quote Sullivan. Mormon doctrine as “weird” will come up quickly. Reading Sullivan himself daily is a good corrective to the notion that Romney is a “liberal” or a RINO. (Sullivan is a man of the right in some ways with a rootless morality, but he is always interesting.)

A few conservatives that voted for Obama retain an interest in being vindicated. They thought the GOP was going into the wilderness and they are in denial that the party is about to (again) nominate an acceptable center-right candidate and has a better than even chance of winning with Romney this fall.

If Romney picks a “Rubio-type,” then he can bet conservatives will come home.

It is false that seventy-five percent of the party has rejected Romney. He is perfectly acceptable to the vast majority of the party, but in a multiple candidate field they have rightly looked around. Why settle quickly when Romney is always there? Maybe somebody better is out there . . . but polls show they are going to vote for Romney if he is the nominee.

Here is a wild prediction: well over 1/4 of New Hampshire will vote for Romney, but it will be dismissed as his “nearly home state.” Sure. That is why McCain won there in 2008.

Romney will be the nominee. The “leaders” meeting to stop him are unknown (or nearly so) to my Evangelical students. They would have to engage in political necromancy to bring back long departed voters that would hear their own dog whistles. Just as zombie-Reagan is not going to run, so the zombie-Religious Right cannot be invoked.

Evangelicals under fifty are conservative . . . they are pro-life and pro-marriage, but they are not “led” by the men meeting in Texas. Romney gained almost a fifth of Iowa Evangelicals, after all in a split field. Real Evangelicals will rally around Romney as the field settles.

UPDATE BY JOHN 5 HOURS AFTER INITIAL PUBLICATION: Looks like this thing is not pulling the kind of energy hoped for:

Two prominent leaders of conservative organizations have confirmed they are not attending and several others are expressing concern that nothing substantial or productive will come from the gathering.

“I understand the importance of discussing how we must energize and mobilize our base, but I believe the process of getting behind a consensus candidate will take care of itself. That’s what elections are for,” noted one invitee who asked not to be identified. “I just don’t think we’ll be able to agree on any one candidate at this time.”

Maybe someone read my comments above?

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The entire Mormon discussion is starting to get a little old already.  But there are, coming out of the din, obviously plowing the rows for the general election, some…

…Emerging Memes

Weird.  Hey the president’s people said they were going this way and the press is right there laying the groundwork.  Unsurprisingly, it is mostly from the newspaper that has drunk most deeply of the Obama Kool-Aid – the NYTimes.  The first was on The Caucus blog about Romney’s “fondness for rules:”

On a ferry ride over to a Republican conference on Mackinac Island, Mich., last month, Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, found themselves on board with a small group of reporters. Mackinac was where Mr. Romney had taken Ann, then his high school sweetheart, to celebrate her 16th birthday, and the two began fondly reminiscing about their date.

“Separate bedrooms!” Mrs. Romney explained.

“It goes without saying,” Mr. Romney added. “We’re from the 1960s.”

Secretly bunking up, of course, would have been breaking the rules.

It is a strange world indeed where decency and order can be portrayed as a deficit.  Of course, this president was unafraid to break every standard in the book to achieve his agenda (think Obamacare) so I guess it should not be surprising that his supporters (there is no other word for the NYTimes at this point) would find rules and order somehow disdainful.  Note that by taking on the religious imperative of sex inside the bounds of marriage, the Times is taking a shot a religion as well.

Then there is the piece about “young, hip Mormons.“  As GetReligion points out, it is not really about religion at all.  The article is about those inside Mormonism struggling to be “cool” when there is, apparently a tradition of “uncoolness” in the faith.  Of course, the whole thing just implies that Mormon candidates are not cool, while Obama is the epitome of cool.   It’s like these people want to live 1968 all over again.  Despite the impressions of the youthful, there are many of us around that were around in 1968 – it wasn’t good and it should not be revisited.

Ethnicity. So, the BBC asks how Hispanic Mormons will vote and NPR does the same about black Mormons.  This stuff scares me a bit.  Not satisfied with ripping up the country along religious lines, some are apparently ready to inflame racial divides that we have worked for decades to heal.  But then it must be remembered that this president is essentially a thug.

The Mormon past with race is no more troubled than any other faith’s past with race.  They were, however, about a decade later than most (but certainly not all!) in coming to terms with the issue.  That is really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it is exploitable by an opposition candidate of color.  That’s tragic.

The one good thing this president is still capable of doing is healing whatever racial rifts may remain in the nation.  Yet he, and his MSM allies, seem bound and determined to exploit race for their own political gain.  I wonder how far they will go.  With the Occupy Movement and the 1968 vibe floating about one begins to wonder about rioting and other less seemly forms of civil unrest.  I lived in LA for the Rodney King riots – not something I want to experience again.

Understanding Hardcore Baptists

Just remember Robert Jeffress is a Baptist.

So, the “Are Mormons Christians” discussion continued this week.  It got kicked up a notch when televangelist and leader of the largest congregation in North America, Joel Osteen, declared that Mormons are in fact Christians.  Well this caused our old acquaintance Al Mohler (Baptist), who is on many other fronts defending faith admirably, to have a bit of an apoplectic seizure.

Then we learn that the Baptists are also fighting hard against the intrusion of – GASP – Calvinism! It would take an extensive lesson in systematic theology to explain what Calvinism is, and its theological opponent (Armenianism), but suffice it to say that I am a Calvinist.  Calvinism is pretty mainstream Protestant stuff.

And then we learn that in history Baptists sided with atheists when their religious liberty was at stake.

So I think we have learned what we really need to learn about Baptists – THEY LIKE A FIGHT.  I am not sure it has to be any more complex than that – they seem to be a church that runs around looking for fights to pick.  Speaking of which, I could not find this guy’s specific denominational affiliation, but if it’s not Baptist, it ought to be.

The Same Old Same Old

Mormon this, religion that – when you consume as much of this stuff as I do, you begin to wonder how much originality there really is in journalists.  For every piece I link here, there are probably a dozen from the “Town Too Small To Be On The Map Weekly,” but in the internet age, they all circulate.  Anyway…

Romney’s not the first Mormon to run. (Duh!)  Not to mention, Mormons are not the only “odd man out” faith in American politics.  And remember, no matter how “far out” you think Romney is religiously, there are those that go farther.  (A story clearly written to establish guilt by association.)

Shockingly, Evangelicals are a big deal in Iowa and that presents Romney with some problems.  (The people writing these stories clearly did not read any news about the 2008 primary!)

And then there are polls.  Turns out most Americans do not know Romney is Mormon.  (Despite appearances, that links to a Perry watching blog of the Houston Chronicle – NOT a Perry campaign blog, but then….)  However, Evangelicals are more aware than the average citizen.  This should emphasize that religion generally has a problem in the nation, but doggone it, there’s a election to win.

And then there is yet more attempts, amongst endless attempts, to figure out how being Mormon affect a politician’s stances. That first link is kind of interesting, but should be discussed by a Mormon, not me.  I hope Lowell has a few minutes on his hands to address this.  The second one, well… this pullquote says it all:

“What makes no sense to me is how you continue to push forward in writing about Gov. Romney’s faith journey when we’ve made it clear in every way possible that this is not a story we want to participate in,” campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul wrote in an email.

You know, it is hard to write about stuff like this without the focus of the piece joining the discussion.  Funny though how Hugh Hewitt was able to get him to talk about it.  Of course, Hewitt likes religion  and does not attempt to use it as a cudgel – could be a hint there for you, CNN.

Politics and Religion News

Romney’s New Hampshire numbers look insurmountable.  Not to mention he is the clear insider favorite (well except for George Will).  Shockingly, the Wall Street Journal had something nice to say about Romney.  But most amazingly, particularly for those that think Romney has a Southern problem, he leads in donations in Alabama!

But in the middle of all this comes a piece, “Do science and politics mix?” concerning Romney and climate change.  For those that doubt science has gained religious significance among some in the nation – do you really need more evidence?  There is no way you can say science is religion neutral when you see stuff like that.

And yet, hiding behind science and religious neutrality assaults on faith continue.

Turns out Catholics matter a lot.  Yeah, they are a bit better organized than Evangelicals.

And finally, everybody is trying to cash in on all this talk, which goes a long way to explaining all this talk.

Lowell adds . . .

The Atlantic post to which John links, “How Mormonism Has Moderated Romney’s and Huntsman’s Politics,” actually seems like an attempt at fairness.  The author’s slip-ups are not huge howlers and are mainly mistakes of proportion that reflect a lack of insight.  For example, to say that Non-Mormons are “banned” from weddings in the church’s temples simply strikes a false note.

In the end the writer seems to get it mostly right:

Acknowledging the complexities of Mormon cultural life, we should also be more careful about projecting our own images of Mormonism upon Romney and Huntsman. Their loyalty to the faith community they grew up in doesn’t necessarily translate into strict observance of its rules. That’s one more reason why the attacks on Romney’s faith are so distasteful. They imply that a man can’t be loyal to his Church while also being thoughtful and progressive. That’s not how faith works in modern America.

First, it is specious to suggest that “thoughtful” and “progressive” are inseparable virtues. I know lots of thoughtful non-progressives (keeping in mind that “progressive” is another perfectly fine word that the left has appropriated to described liberalism – but I digress).   Second, I don’t know how strictly Mitt Romney observes Mormonism’s “rules” (we tend to think of them as commandments from God), but I suspect he’s pretty orthodox about the central tenets: paying tithing, not drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, and chastity, to name a few.

But how much does that really matter, in light of the personal behavior of recent presidents? And how much detail do voters need about such minutiae? Some Mormons drink Coca-Cola and some do not. Do we need to know into which group Romney falls? Some Orthodox Jews are Glatt Kosher and some are not, but I have no idea which approach Joe Lieberman has adopted.

And I don’t care.  Neither should you.

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I seem to be very out-of-step with most people because I find little humor in the movie The Hangover.  It’s the story of the day after a Vegas bachelor party in which things have gone horribly wrong.  I’ve done stupid things in my life, much like the film’s protagonists, and I do not find them a source for humor, I find them embarrassing.  One takes the hard won lessons from such a mistake, but does not celebrate or enjoy what lead to those lessons.

That would be good advice for Rick Perry, but he seems to want it both ways.  He seems to want to appear to have learned his lesson, but he still wants to enjoy some fruit from the mistake.

Most of the post-debate analysis and discussion has focused on this particular debate’s feistiness, and particularly the “showdown” between Romney and Perry on immigration.  That showdown looked to me like the hay-maker that missed.  It was apparent from the cheesy opening CNN made for this thing and all the after-talk that the media and presumably the public, since that is who the media tries to please, would prefer professional wrestling and it’s unending trash talk to reasoned discussion on important issues of the day.  *SIGH*

Needless to say, our focus is a bit different.  The heart of the debate for this trio of blogger was the much dreaded “religion question.”  Before it got to Perry and Romney is was pretty uneventful, but then Romney took Perry to religion/politics/governance school and Perry did not much like what he heard.  But before we get there, let’s look at how much the question should not have been asked.

There is little doubt that the religion smack from Jeffress was approved of by the Perry campaign, they seem to want it.  Despite serious criticism, Perry allies continue to push the button.  It seems to me that if the point of a debate is to explore serious issues with the candidates, the moderator would not hand the candidates questions that are clearly designed to push buttons created by or candidate or the other.  But then this entire debate seemed to want more heat than light.

Then there is the legitimacy of the issue itself.  Uber-atheist Christopher Hitchens seems to be the only one interested in it.  Luminaries as bright as Chuck Colson are decrying the entire discussion.  The NYTimes is getting nailed for bringing it up in a reasonably nice way.  Even seeming natural allies of Perry and his sillier supporters are crying foul.  This kind of stuff, shouldn’t happen at all, and when it does it has traditionally been left for the water cooler – in the new media age, we can even fight the water cooler talk.  However instead, the old media seems to want to sink us deeper in the mire.

So it came up, after things had turned testy and Perry had gone personal.  Santorum and Gingrich acquitted themselves well and Perry reitereated his disagreement with Jeffress.  Then Romney got brilliant.  Thanks to Nancy at EFM for transcribing:

“With regard to the disparaging comments about my faith, I’ve heard worse.  So I’m not going to lose sleep over that.  Actually, what I found most troubling about the Reverend’s introduction was when he said, ‘In choosing our nominee, we should inspect his religion.  And someone who is a good, moral person is not whom we should select.  Rather, we should select someone based on their religious beliefs.’

“That idea–that we should choose them based on their religion for public office–is what I find most troubling. The founders of this country went to great length to make sure–even put it in the Constitution–that we shouldn’t choose people to lead this country based on their religion, that this would be a country that would respect other faiths, where there’s plurality of faith, where there’s tolerance for people of other faiths.  That’s a bedrock principle and it was that principle, Governor, that I wanted you to say, It’s wrong.  Rather than say, ‘Reverend Jeffress, you knocked that out of the park,’ I wanted you to say, ‘Reverend Jeffress, you got that wrong.  We should select people not based on their faith.’

“And I don’t expect you to distance yourself from your faith any more than I would.  But the concept that we select people based on the church or the synagogue they go to, I think, is a very dangerous and enormous departure from the principles of our Constitution.”

But it was Perry’s response to that that tells the tale.  For that you’ll have to go to the video in our left hand widget, but essentially Perry said “I have nothing to add.”  So, Perry “disagrees” with Jeffress, but refuses to repudiate, or even correct along the lines Romney outlined, him.  The LATimes said Perry defended Jeffress.  So what do we learn from this – other than the fact that Perry does not quite “get it” on this issue.

Well, it seems Perry’s base has pretty deep pockets but is very narrow.  Simply put Perry has to hold on to that base very tightly.  If he repudiates them he’s got nothing.  You’ll note in the statistics just linked why Perry’s jobs plan seems to rotate so fully around domestic energy production.  We seem to have a two-trick pony on our hands.  Takes a bit more to be president.

But back to the debate proper.  What we had here was an attempt by the moderator to spark a fight.  Romney refused to give it to them and Perry was unarmed.  The real sadness here is that Perry does Evangelicalism, already taking heavy fire, no good.  The NYTimes op-ed just linked is really beneath refutation, (it contends essentially that Evangelicals are not stupid becasue of their religious convictions, but because they are conservative) but it is a sign that we are under attack.

All I can say is, if this trend in debate positioning and moderation continues, they will soon be moderated by Jerry Springer, and feature John Cena as the special guest referee – and this will matter.

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I had a last-minute opportunity to attend the CNN debate at the Venetian in Las Vegas. So here I am, in the Romney campaign room, watching on a big screen. We had a pre-debate briefing from the campaign staff. Watch for Romney to focus on jobs (Nevada’s unemployment rate is 13.2%). They also expect the faith issue to come up, probably from the news media questions.

More comments to come! Watch this space.

1. The campaign expected a lot of talk tonight about 9-9-9. That’s certainly happening.

2. Perry announces yet another policy plan that is yet to be unveiled. “At the end of the week.”

3. Herman Cain’s going to have a fruit salad made by the end of this debate. It needs more than apples and oranges, though. Romney’s “bushel basket” comeback will be one of the oft-quoted clips from the debate.

4. Perry refuses to address the specific question about Romney’s 59-
point plan and starts talking about jobs, obviously a scripted response. Does this guy have any nimbleness in him at all?

5. Santorum tries to filibuster so Romney can’t answer.

6. 5:40 p.m. – Ron Paul comments on libertarian principles that apply to health care. Not much new there. It’s clear everyone on the stage hates Obamacare.

7. 5:41 p.m. – Perry turns the health care discussion into one about illegal aliens and Romney’s gardener in 2006 or so. He also tries to filibuster Romney. Where have basic manners gone? “A tough couple of debates for Rick.” Ouch, that will leave a mark. (By the way, it was Romney’s gardner who hired illegals, not Romney.) Perry looks incredibly petty on this one.

8. 5:45 p.m. – “If you want to be president of the United States,” you have to let people talk.” Another mark left.

9. 5:56 p.m. – Perry wants to talk about what he wants to talk about. I.e., “Stop asking me questions!”

10. 6:07 p.m. – Before tonight I’m not sure we have seen this bunch so feisty.

11. 6:10 p.m. – So far faith hasn’t come up. Will we make it to the end without The Question arising?

12. 6:20 p.m. – The Question comes up, courtesy of Anderson Cooper!

13. 6:21 p.m. – Santorum handles it well, focuses on what’s relevant about a candidate’s faith. Good.

14. 6:22 p.m. – Gingrich also gives a nuanced answer – your religion is between you and God. But you should have a God.

Perry is asked about Pastor Jeffress. All Perry is willing to say is that he did not agree with Jeffress, but that Jeffress has the right to his opinion. Then Perry wanders off into some nonsense about how the real “faith” issue is that we’ve lost faith in the government. What?

Romney steps up. He was clearly ready for this. He explains what Gov. Perry should have repudiated, and pretty much hits it out of the park.

Perry is given a chance to repudiate bigotry (now that it’s been explained to him how he can do that). He repeats his statement that he disagrees with Jeffress and says he doesn’t know what else to say, or how else to apologize.

Really? Wow, at least Huckabee was skillful in his handling of the issue.

15. 6:37 p.m. – I wish Ron Paul would go away. He takes time in these debates away from candidates who actually have a chance to win.

16. Tweet of the night: “Rick Perry is hoping that this debate stays in Vegas.”

And it’s over!

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John, John Mark and I will all be guests on the Hugh Hewitt show today, beginning at the top of the show, 3:06 p.m. Pacific time.  You can listen online here.

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Over the last 5 years or so we have documented more than once the inherently distracting silliness that usually results when the news media focus on any presidential candidate’s religion.  Molly Ball and Jonathan Martin at Politico have written a piece that (unintentionally, of course) illustrates that problem.

Martin, who is a good if occasionally left-leaning reporter, usually tries hard to get it right.  I think he whiffed badly in this one, which you can read in its entirety at The Mormon primary: Mitt Romney vs. Jon Huntsman.  Here are a few samples:

Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. are both Mormons, both wealthy scions of old Utah families, both ex-governors with chiseled features and terrific hair.

Strike one.  Here we have reporters pushing a story line much too hard.  Romney is the scion of an old Michigan family. I am not sure Romney’s ancestors were even in Utah for more than a few years back in the 1800s, before being sent off to colonize other parts of the Great Basin.  One might as well say Steve Young is the scion of an old Utah family because he’s a descendant of Brigham Young, even though he’s never lived in the state except while going to school there.

The presence of a second Mormon in the race could help Romney by making the church seem less unusual to those who are unfamiliar with it. But it seems just as likely that Huntsman, with his strikingly similar profile, would erode Romney’s base of support, reordering the GOP field.

Strike two.  It amazes me (maybe it shouldn’t) that writers who should know better keep making statements like this. Please indulge me as I quote myself from a few days ago:

There are just over 6 million Mormons in the USA, about the same number as the Jewish population in America.  Of those 6 million Latter-day Saints, about half claim active affiliation with the church.  So we have 3 million individuals scattered across the country who claim to take their Mormon faith seriously, and perhaps half of those are voters, most of whom are concentrated in the Western USA.  And Romney and Huntsman are going to fight over those votes?  And the outcome of that battle is going to make a difference?  And it’s going to be a serious fight, even though Huntsman has no organization, no fund-raising network, and no experience in a national campaign, while Romney has all those things in spades?  If you believe all that, I want to talk to you about a great deal on shares in a bridge spanning the Great Salt Lake.

I understand the idea that dividing the Mormon base might have some fund-raising implications and might affect the outcome of some smaller state primaries (think Utah, Idaho and Nevada) , but I remain to be convinced that “the Mormon vote” is going to be signficant at the presidential level.

One Utahn put it this way: Romney is Brigham Young University, Huntsman is the University of Utah.

Ball one.  The authors get some credit for diligence and cleverness on this one.  Huntsman is much more centrist than Romney, whose positions make him a standard mainstream conservative.  To a Utah graduate like me, with family members who went to BYU, this analogy makes immediate sense.  I guess it’s a bit of inside baseball for Mormons.

A competition for Mormon bona fides between the two men would end in a draw. Romney’s great-great-grandfather was a 19th-century church leader who moved to the Utah Territory before statehood. Huntsman’s father and namesake is still a top official in the church who lends his Gulfstream jet to other LDS leaders, while his wife’s grandfather was in the church’s Quorom of the 12 Apostles, top figures in the hierarchy.

Ball two (just missed the corner).  Not to pick too many nits, but it is Jon Huntsman Jr.’s grandfather, David Haight, who was a member of the Council of Twelve.  I don’t know what position Huntsman’s father, Jon Huntsman, Sr., now holds – he was once an LDS mission president in Washington, D.C. – but such vague references like ”a top official in the church” don’t tell us anything and look like mere filler.

Huntsman, too, went on a two-year mission, to Taiwan. It was there that he became fluent in Chinese. But his family — wife Mary Kaye and their seven children, two of them adopted from Asia — are not strict Mormons, and he has never served in church leadership. More than a few eyebrows were raised in the church when Huntsman’s eldest daughter, Abigail, was married last year not in a Mormon temple, but at the National Cathedral by an Episcopal priest.

Strike three.  Where to begin with this one?  It is hard enough for members of a faith to judge one another’s devoutness; now we thave the news media doing it?  What does “never served in church leadership” mean?  And if a Mormon’s child chooses not to follow his or her parents’ faith, are we supposed to draw conclusions about the parents’ own religious commitment?  Like those of all faiths, Mormon children do depart from the faith of their fathers.  This is not interesting or worthy of comment in the news media.

In Utah, the hope is that two Mormons running at a time when the Democratic Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate is also LDS would make the church seem less exotic—something that is undoubtedly beneficial to Romney.

Now Martin and Ball are in danger of being ejected from the ballpark.  ”In Utah, the hope is….”  Whose hope?  Are these two journalists able to divine the views of an entire state?

I’ll close with some wisdom from none other than Karl Rove, who happened to be in Utah yesterday to speak at a political dinner:

Rove, an Anglican who attended high school in Utah, believes the Mormon issue was overblown in 2008 and doesn’t think it will be much of a factor in 2012.

“This makes me queasy,” he said of the close scrutiny the LDS religion got during Romney’s candidacy.

“I think people do want to know what motivates any candidate for president, so they want to know what their faith is. But there’s a difference between wanting to identify someone’s faith and come to some sense about their authenticity and what happened to Romney, which was look at his faith and ‘let’s examine its tenets and hold them up for public scrutiny,’ ” he said. “It just makes me queasy.”

(Emphasis added.)  Ball and Martin should pay attention to Rove.  Focusing on the religious tenets and commitment of presidential aspirants is problematic, to say the least.  Rather than delve into such distracting material, Politico should tell us something helpful about the candidates.

John adds his two cents…

Lord please save us from “make news” news.  When I read this piece I had one reaction – How come we have not read the same sort of article about, say, Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee.  Both come with extraordinarily strong mainstream Christian credentials.  Professions of faith figure very strongly in both possibles bios.  Huckabee is well known and Pawlenty’s recent book at points reads like a spiritual autobiography, not a political one.

Or consider Mitch Daniels and John Thune.  Both are professed Christians, men of deep and abiding faith.

Do I have to go on?  This piece, and many like it (yes there is more than we have linked to this week – watch for Monday’s post) are, by their very existence in the absence of similar articles about others of differing faiths, religiously biased.

Let’s return to the question we ask so often here – Suppose Al Sharpton entered the Democratic primary process for 2012.  Would be be treated to piece after piece about he and Obama and the black vote?  Would that not be considered somehow racist?  In fact, we do not have to suppose anymore.  Is not virtually any opposition offered against the president now charged with being racist? Articles about the role race may or may not have played in the election of Barack Obama as president seem to be verboten – I have not read one, have you?   The occassional passing reference, perhaps – but where is the polling?  The investigation?

Certainly if the “Romney v Huntsman” question is legitimate for such an esteemed outlet as Politico to examine, so then should be the role of race in Obama’s last campaign.

And let’s not even go to the place about the MSM doing whatever it can to damage the presupposed Republican frontrunner (Romney) as early as possible.  I mean there is just no way the MSM is politically biased, is there?  (Smirk, guffaw…)

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