John and I were on Hugh Hewitt’s show Friday for a few minutes and Hugh asked us if we thought The Speech put The Question to bed. We didn’t have time to answer fully.

On reflection, I think what has happened is that Romney has irrevocably and forever changed the discussion about The Question. (K-Lo seems to agree.)

As John notes below, Romney has drawn a line in the sand, and everyone watching this race — candidates, commentators, or voters– will need to decide which side they are on.

Why? Because Romney has taken the high ground on the issue of religion. From this point on, the following statements from his “Faith in America” speech will guide the discussion:

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This is such a perfect follow-up to this morning’s reading list that we had to post it right away. Romney’s team has essentially put some of the text of his Townhall op-ed from last Friday into this television advertisement:

The ad will begin airing today in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. What will the response be from conservatives who are religious people? Will it be, “Yes! That’s the kind of candidate I want!” Or will it be, “That’s nice, but . . . .?”
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In talking to my evangelical friends, both personally and  in some emails I receive about this blog, there are some themes or statements that come up again and again.  I thought I would address a few of them.

How can I, in good conscience, vote for someone whose beliefs are very different than mine?

Why would your conscience be troubled?  You are voting for someone to do the job of president, not pastor.  You are voting for the individual, not his beliefs.  Can he do the job?  Will he do the job in a way that aligns with my principles and values?  Those are the questions that matter.  When hiring someone for my business, those are the question I ask.  Of course, I would prefer someone that believes as I do, but often I find candidates much better qualified for the job with other, or more frequently simply without, beliefs.  I frankly would be foolish to hire a lesser qualified candidate to operate a soil sampling drill rig simply because the best candidate was a Jehovah’s Witness instead of a Presbyterian.

People’s beliefs really matter in their lives, and Mormons believe so differently.

Indeed Mormon belief is quite different, but how precisely does that matter?  It is my opinion that Mormon belief is grossly misunderstood.  It is not orthodox by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not so far off as the common perception might suggest.  Consider the Godhead, to use the LDS term.  Mormons are decidedly non-Trinitarian, fair enough.  But does that make a difference in how a Mormon would govern?  I don’t think so.  Are our values based on our Trinitarian views? - No.  Our values are largely based on the Judaic law, which is in turn based on monotheism, but not Trinitarianism.  Some try to paint Mormons as polytheists, and the strictest possible interpretation of their theology of the godhead would indicate they are, but I have read enough Mormon theologians to know they do not carry their views of the godhead that far.  Ask any Mormon if they are polytheistic and they will deny it vociferously.  At best we can accuse them of having lousy logic in their theological formulations, but in practice and life they are little different than us.  Please remember they hold the same scripture we do, plus  “The Lord your God is ONE God” is scripture for Mormons just as much as it is for us.  The additional scripture of Mormonism does not to the best of my knowledge contradict a word of the Bible - they interpret it very differently, but that is not a critical matter in this instance.

So, my question to you - specifically what is it that Mormons believe, as cited by Mormons, not anti-Mormon activists, that will affect how they govern?  My researches of the last year and 100 years of Utah history says that they govern just like we do.

If you are still concerned, consider:

How do you feel when atheists say you should not vote for X because he is a Christian?  This is America; our freedom to practice our faith is highly dependent on the freedom to have religious diversity in all areas of society, including government.  If we, even in the privacy of the voting booth, exclude someone of another faith, then we are giving permission to allow others to exclude us.  And we are increasingly in the minority in this nation . . . .

Technorati Tags: Mormons, belief, difference, Evangelicals, Mitt Romney

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Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers! If you are here for the first time, please take a minute to check out the rest of the blog. Writing on the fine Real Clear Politics Blog this morning, John McIntyre writes approvingly of Romney's recent progress, notes that "2008 was probably not going to be George Allen's year," and concludes that "Romney is fast emerging as the alternative to the two moderate heavyweights McCain and Giuliani." Then comes this provocative statement:

But back to Romney: If the Mormon issue wasn't floating around in the background, he would almost certainly be the clear frontrunner for the nomination. Expect to see Romney's stock continue to rise as many conservatives unhappy with the prospect of McCain or Giuliani start to line up behind the Massachusetts Governor.

"If the Mormon issue wasn't floating around in the background." If McIntyre is right, then we really have come to a place where the only thing standing between Romney and front-runner status as a presidential candidate is . . . his religion. As much as my mind rebels against such a thought, politics is the ultimate realists' game. It doesn't matter whether it's fair or right for Romney's religion to be so important; if that's the way it is, then that fact must be dealt with. What does this mean?

Leaving aside the question of whether pundits should raise the "Mormon issue" in such a cavalier manner, which John addresses toward the end of this post, here are a few ideas:

• If Romney does start to look more and more like a front-runner, then attacks on him will proliferate. No one will directly attack him for being a Mormon, but whisper campaigns may be attempted. The problem with whisper campaigns is that they are effective only in short-term situations (such as the last few weeks before a primary election). When there's time for the whispers to be countered, the effort usually peters out, and 2008 is still quite a ways off.
• He can probably expect more subtle attacks, such as this rather clever piece by a Gingrich operative, who suggests that Romney is the candidate of the blueblood elites– the modern-day Rockefeller Republicans. Trouble is, as a Mormon, Romney's already an outsider to the world of bluebloods; his only Ivy League connections are in graduate school; he didn't go to Yale and does not belong to Skull and Bones; and he's probably not even in the Bohemian Club either (too much drinking there, you know). So that one won't stick, but others will be attempted.

• Back to the religion issue. Would it receive such attention if pundits didn't bring it up all the time? Maybe not, but remember, politics is a realists' game. My hunch is that after all is said and done, Romney's Mormonism will simply die out as an issue in the GOP primaries. His lifestyle and wordlview are too simpatico with those of the religious conservatives who might care about a candidate's faith. If he's nominated by the GOP, Romney will be viciously and openly attacked by the Daily Kos crowd, who will paint him as a homophobe for his stand on same-sex marriage, a bigot because of Mormonism's all-male priesthood and its former policy on African-Americans and the priesthood, and who knows what else. Expect them to try to make him look like the American version of the Taliban. Will any of that stick? I am doubtful; time will tell. But it's going to be an interesting ride.

John adds: Lowell beat me to the punch on this one, frankly it honked me off when I read it very early this AM. Here's the thing. There appears to be two different attacks on the religion front. The first is from the left, who frankly cannot tell the difference between Romney and an Evangelical - their worry is that he will be more committed to the issues than a "normal" Evangelical. It's a blanket religion attack - it's the same attack that Bush had to deal with. It's the same attack Republicans will be dealing with as long as they remain closely aligned with religious interests.

The other attack, and the one that really bothers me, is what I call "The Question." It's from the right, it's from within. Everybody loves Romney, then comes one of Laura Ingraham's "But…Monkeys." "Can a Mormon get elected?" Nobody actually knows, but they have to ask.

I truly wonder if it has occurred to anybody that the mere asking creates and fuels the issue - an issue is, after all, a question the political process seeks to answer. While I was reflecting on McIntyre's piece this morning I think I figured out what needs to happen here. The Commmonwealth PAC needs to pay for a real study, not a quick phone poll, but a real study where polling is used to form focus groups, put together demographically, and get some genuine data.

Right now, from a purely political standpoint the only issue in terms of the primaries is "The Question." And that exists only in minds of the political watchers. I am beginning to resent it because it implies that Evangelicals are some sort of semi-bigoted rubes. "Of course, all we political insiders know it's not really an issue - but the great unwashed masses, are they really that sophisticated?" Either the insiders really do have a problem with Romney's religious affiliation, and they have found "safe" way to express it, or there is a problem. If the former, it's time for Romney to get busy dealing with them. We need data to even know how to proceed with the later - and the insiders above all should know that!

We are a humble blog and lack the resources to do the kind of polling and testing needed, but the insiders most assuredly do not. It's time for them to stop asking and start answering.

Lowell: I wish I had said that. Simply tossing the issue into a piece that is about something else seems intellectually lazy and borderline irresponsible. Further analysis from a pro-Romney site here.

John's Addendum: I have summarized my evidentiary support for the assertion that no one really knows if Romney's faith is an issue here.

Technorati Tags: Romney, Giuliani; Gingrich, George Allen, McCain, Mormon, Mormonism, religious bigotry, Rockefeller Republicans

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No doubt, most view Romney's greatest accomplishment as governor is the health care plan he made happen. (Although, his actions in the Big Dig mess and most recently in response to the foiled terror plot may be changing that.) It is being broadly discussed as the wave of the future. There is a good analysis here.

The plan is an excellent, provided that one accepts that health care is an entitlement. I realize that such acceptance is a public reality and a political necessity, and yet I am unwilling to make it personally. While not a libertarian on most things, I find myself passionately libertarian when it comes to matters of health and health care.

Before I launch into this completely, I want to state that I do not think the nightmarish problems that I am concerned with are the intention of Romney or anyone else that brought the new system to pass. But there is such a thing as the Law of Unintended Consequences. Who knew that the welfare system of the early 60's would result in the virtual destruction of traditional family structure in the poor of America and particularly in the Afro-American community?

One's health is, save perhaps for one's spiritual state, the most personal aspect of one's life. What we eat, how we spend our free time, who we have in our bedrooms, all are issues related to health and health care. As health care becomes an entitlement, the providers of that entitlement will be obligated to control the costs and one way they will do so is by trying to control these very private choices of an individual.

For example, because HIV is primarily transmitted via homosexual activity, would not health care providers seek to limit such activity? Conservatives might not mind that too much, so let's look at some other examples. The Hindu religion mandates vegetarianism, at least some forms of it. Suppose this diet was shown to have health ramifications - now what? Can we force Hindus to eat meat, or can we force everyone to become Hindu? What about the use of psychotropic drugs by some religions? And those are just the obvious examples. What about family size limitations? Do we really want to end up like China?

Some recent studies attribute long life to religious faith - shall faith now be a government mandate? If so what religion? These kinds of things are being discussed today. We've seen it with smoking and now we are seeing it with weight. When health care is an entitlement, you are required to have policies about things that the government just should not be having policies about - personal, private matters. Thus, while I think Romney's plan is excellent if we accept healthcare as an entitlement, I think it is a mistake to do so.

Lowell: I've spent the last 20+ years in the heath care industry, so this is an issue near and dear to my heart. John has identified the most common "hot button" objection to Romney's plan: The "individual mandate," which requires everyone to have health insurance of some kind, much like many states require everyone to have auto insurance. The new Massachusetts law is described in (somewhat wonkish) detail here. (Full disclosure: The last link is to a newsletter published by my law firm, and in which I had a hand.)

The Romney plan does get a mixed reaction in the conservative community. The individual mandate is anathema to libertarians; but the plan was crafted in close cooperation with the Heritage Foundation, an organization with impecable conservative credentials. My response to John is long, but I'll summarize here:

First, I feel your pain. I am not in love with the idea of the government requiring citizens to spend money on an item as personal as health insurance. I also am worreid about the unintended consequences.

Second, however, I think the pain is necessary. The auto insurance analogy is useful in this regard: As a society in which the automobile is a ubiquitous and indispensible element of our lives and our economy, we have come to accept the fact that the costs to all of us from a libertarian approach to auto insurance would be catastrophic. (A libertarian purist would disagree with that statement, but I think I'm right.)

Similarly, the health care industry now represents about 16% of our gross domestic product. It is simply a huge part of our lives. Also, and just as important, I believe we have made a decision as a society that everyone is entitled to a minimum level of health care. One can disagree with that decision, but I believe it has been made; it might well be described as part of the American social compact by now.

Given that, I do not see the U.S. returning to Charles Dickens' England, where people had to depend on the mercy of others to get good care. (I know John is not even close to arguing for that; it's simply a point of contrast.) In other words, we are simply not going to tolerate a system in which people will be forced to do without health care. There is a religious component to this view (witness the many Catholic and Adventist hospitals in existence), as well as a social democratic "nanny state" element, but it is undeniably woven into the fabric of our society.

My opinion: Given the immutable nature of that societal compact, the Romney plan is an ingenious form of social policy jiu-jitsu that turns us away from creeping socialist approach and actually incorporates free market principles of individual autonomy, even as it encroaches on citizens' freedom not to have health insurance. The Heritage Foundation notes the Romney plan's achievements:

1. Creation of a new market for health insurance in which individuals and families can buy pri­vate coverage of their choice, own it, and take it from job to job without losing the existing favorable tax treatment for employer-spon­sored health insurance, and

2. Creation of a new system of premium assis­tance for lower-income individuals to purchase private coverage based on leveraging existing uncompensated care funds used to cover the cost of care for the uninsured.

"These two components," say the Heritage authors,

could revolutionize the traditional health care system by empowering individuals, including low-income persons, to buy and own their health care coverage, and they can be adapted to the unique conditions of other states.

So the Romney healthcare plane is a mixed bag. There's that non-libertarian individual mandate, but there's so much more that empowers individuals, which at the same time just might solve the problem of the uninsured in this country. If the plan works, 95% of Massachusetts citizens will have insurance within three years, and they'll have it in a free market, not in a single payer health system like Britain's disastrous National Health Service or the quickly deteriorating Canadian system.

As for the religion angle, as long as we have a plan that incorporates individual autonomy with market principles, the chance that unintended consequences, of which Jon rightly warns, will encroach on our personal beliefs seems pretty small. But it's an experiment. Let's see how it unfolds. If the Massachusetts system fails in the short term, Romney's fortunes will take a huge, probably unsurvivable hit. If it succeeds or is perceived as succeeding, he'll be sitting pretty.

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Theocracy! Theocracy! Theocracy! by Ross Douthat, is the featured article in the August/September issue of First Things.  I heartily recommend the entire article, in which Douthat reviews four books attacking the rise of religious influence in American politics.  Here are two excerpts.  The first tells you where Douthat is going:

The term theocrat has become a commonplace, employed by bomb-throwing columnists, otherwise-sensible reporters, and “centrist” Republicans such as Connecticut’s Christopher Shays, who recently complained that the GOP was becoming the “party of theocracy.” And now the specter of a looming Khomeini’ism has migrated into the realm of pop sociology, producing a spate of books with titles like The Baptizing of America, Kingdom Coming, Thy Kingdom Come—and, inevitably, American Theocracy, the Kevin Phillips jeremiad that shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list this spring.

Kind of strikes a familiar chord, doesn't it?  The second excerpt is one of Douthat's concluding paragraphs:

So the rise of the Religious Right, and the growing “religion gap” that Phillips describes but fails to understand, aren’t new things in American history but a reaction to a new thing: to an old political party newly dependent on a bloc of voters who reject the role that religion has traditionally played in American political life. The hysteria over theocracy, in turn, represents an attempt to rewrite the history of the United States to suit these voters’ prejudices, by setting a year zero somewhere around 1970 and casting everything that’s happened since as a battle between progress and atavism, reason and fundamentalism, the Enlightenment and the medieval dark.

As both John and I have argued here several times, whether the GOP nominee is Romney or someone else, if that nominee is an unabashedly religious person, the fearsome attacks will come from the left, and from the kinds of writers who authored the books Douthat reviews. If Romney is in fact the nominee, any attacks on his Mormon faith from evangelicals during the GOP primaries will seem like child's play compared to what the Daily Kos fever swamp, and the likes of Kevin Phillips, will dish up.   Update:  John notes below that calling attacks from some evangelicals "child's play" tends to understate the level of venom they will carry.  Good point.  What I am saying is that as terrible as those intra-religious attacks will be, I think the eventual attacks from the left will be farther beyond the pale than we can even imagine now.  I hope I'm wrong. I hope I've whetted your appetite for Douthat's entire article.  It's well worth your time. John adds: I agree it is an excellent piece, and I agree that any GOP nominee of strongly identifiable faith, Mormon or creedal Christian, will suffer massive attacks from the anti-religious left, but I am not yet entirely convinced that attacks on Romney from the Evangelical right will be "child's play" - that's a very strong phrase.  There is little more potentially venomous confrontation  in the world than a believer attacking a "competing" believer.  I am increasingly convinced that the size of the group on the right that would carry out such attacks is not as large as feared, so the attacks may not be that effective, but measured in pure venom…
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