©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Over the weekend we were treated to three major left wing pieces discussing Romney’s religion and calling on him to discuss it “openly.”  There was Randall Balmer in The New Republic:

The essential question, from the perspective of many voters, concerns the very nature of Mormonism, an upstart religion born in western New York in 1830 and persecuted for much of the nineteenth century.

And Then Frank Bruni in the NYTimes:

Four years later, he still avoids the word, trumpeting his faithfulness without specifying the faith. What’s surprising is that no one around him — not reporters, not rivals — talks about it all that much, either.

And most notably, Frank Rich in The New Yorker:

That faith is key to the Romney mystery. Had the 2002 Winter Olympics not been held in Salt Lake City, and not been a major civic project of Mormon leaders there, it’s unlikely Romney would have gotten involved. (Whether his involvement actually prompted a turnaround of that initially troubled enterprise, as he claims, is a subject of debate.) But Romney is even less forthcoming about his religion than he is about his tax returns. When the Evangelical view of Mormonism as a non-Christian cult threatened his 2008 run, Romney delivered what his campaign hyped as a JFK-inspired speech on “Faith in America.” This otherwise forgotten oration was memorable only for the number of times it named Romney’s own faith: once.

Michael Walsh, standing on NRO’s Corner said of the Rich piece:

It’s a cold day in hell when I recommend anything my old chum Frank Rich writes, but this long piece in New York magazine entitled “Who in God’s Name Is Mitt Romney?” is most definitely worth a read — especially for the Republican leadership — if only as a preview of a coming leftist line of attack against the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney: his Mormon heritage and faith.

There is clearly a storm brewing.  One is tempted to look at this and think that the general election is shaping up to be one of the ugliest in history.  I think that is true, but I also think there is more at stake.  In Florida we saw a willingness by Democrats to mess with the Republican primary process, blatantly.  Two more piece appeared over the weekend that are very worthy of note.  Jennifer Rubin:

Politico’s John Harris has a must-read column on the manufacture of outrage, a staple of modern campaigns, over Mitt Romney’s comments on the “very poor.”

[...]

And yet on this one, the right was arguably more guilty than the left in stoking hysteria. The arguments offered to justify the overreaction were decidedly unconvincing.

One must ask, “Why?”  And so we turn to Sean Trende doing the numbers at Real Clear Politics:

Regardless, we see that a large portion of the GOP fight can be explained very well using only demographic variables. This is what I believe Cost picked up on when he found that northern conservatives voted for Romney, while southern conservatives voted against him. In the north, the conservatives tend to be non-evangelical. In the south, they tend to be evangelical (in Florida, they’re split).

Why this is the case is open to interpretation. The simplest answer is anti-Mormon bias, but that seems a bit too easy. After all, the alternatives are a pair of Catholics. The other possibility — and this is a problem with regression — is that religion could be a stand-in for ideology, and that, regardless of self-identification, a self-described conservative evangelical Republican is significantly to the right of a self-described conservative who is non-evangelical.

There is a clear picture emerging – the tensions inside the Republican party are real and the borders are defined, at least in some large measure, by religion.  Now, of course, all primaries develop tensions inside a party, but religion adds a dimension to those tensions not normally seen.  I don’t want to go all left-wing, “religion is evil” here, but a religious component to a conflict more often than not serves to intensify the conflict.

What we are seeing in the Ballmer, Bruni, and Rich pieces, not to mention related pieces centering around the recently released book “The Real Romney” questioning Romney’s “authenticity,” is an effort on the part of Obama’s media allies to cleave the Republican party in two.  They don’t just want to win the presidency, I think they want to do away with us for good.  It appears to this observer that they believe the largely unspoken religious element of this primary cycle gives the typical primary tensions more force – force that with a small nudge could cleave the party permanently.  At the very least, they think they can force a large portion of the Republican base to sit this one out – and make it very hard for the Republicans to pull them back in.

Yes, there is still a primary battle to fight, but it is not too early to think about the general.  At this point, the best way to think about the general is to deal with the tensions in the primary.  In the lead up to Florida we wrote about the problems in lying to oneself.  Just because we are not talking about Romney’s faith, does not mean it is not at play.  To simply not talk about it is a form of self-deception.  We can ill afford such deception with a general election looming ahead that is likely to be as ugly as this one.

Mitt Romney is now very likely going to be the nominee.  It is time for those opposed to him for less than legitimate reasons to get over it.  We need to get the primary battle back on a footing that does not supply the REAL opposition so much ammunition.

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

“Governor Mormon?”!  Really?  It’s going to be a very ugly general.  But I wonder if that has anything to do with this?

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

With a Hat Tip to an emailer.

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Finally, as the polls were closing, frequent Romney critic David Freddoso of NRO let loose an inconvenient bit of information:

“Non-Mormons seem to have preferred Romney over Gingrich by 42%-26%, a margin similar to that in Florida” http://bit.ly/wffowM

Oops.

Fox is also reporting that Romney won Catholics by a 2 to 1 margin, against two Catholic opponents.

Oops again.

Finally, Justin Hart, a Romney supporter, tweeted that if not a single Mormon had voted in Nevada, Romney would still have won by 20 points. You can do the arithmetic.

We do not – not – expect the news media to drop its obsession with Romney’s Mormonism as a theme for much of their analysis of his success. But we do like to point out, as often as we can, how specious their analysis is.

We also got this, in Romney’s victory speech:

“I will protect religious freedom and will overturn any regulation that tramples on our first freedom: our right to worship as we choose.”

That is clearly a reference to this week’s Obama administration rule requiring faith-based employers to include contraception services (including elective abortions) in the health insurance plans they offer their employees. We blogged about that in our post this morning. I am sure that John’s heart is gladdened by Romney’s statement, as is mine. No doubt Romney will develop that theme in the coming weeks and months. Jennifer Rubin tweeted that it will probably be a major attack point for him.

We’ll have more to say after all the numbers are in and the dust settles.

UPDATE: Even Gingrich just excused his crushing defeat by noting that “Nevada is a heavily Mormon state.” Will the press let him get away with that? Probably.

John, The Next Morning Says

In all my morning reading, only one source notes Newt’s clear Mormon swipe.  We did the math yesterday morning on this thing.  Not to mention that I fail to understand how 7% of anything is “heavily.”

I spent several years of my life in the early ’90′s working the gold mines in Nevada.  Mining is the second biggest industry in the state, behind gaming.  (I am an environmental consultant after all.)  There are very few roads in the state I have not driven on in part because there are very few roads in the state outside of Las Vegas and Reno.  In all that travel I don’t think I can remember seeing a stake house.  I can not leave my house here in SoCal without tripping over a Mormon structure of some sort, but in Nevada? – give me a break.

Gingrich’s comment is simply despicable.  Gingrich is done as a candidate.  Santorum has a case yet to make, but Gingrich is done.  Sadly, he will garner enormous press because he is a good show – but like most of what passes for “good TV” these days, its side show material – a little off color, trashy, with just a hint of forbidden.

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Despite comprising about 7 percent of the state’s population, they made up more than one-quarter of the GOP caucus electorate, and entrance polls showed Romney winning a stunning 95 percent of their vote.

In other words, half of Romney’s vote in Nevada came from fellow Mormons, and he could have won the state’s caucuses even if he hadn’t gotten a single vote from anyone else.

Because Mormons vote in unison and because they turn out in large numbers, a state like Nevada is virtually impossible for any of Romney’s opponents to win.

OK, forgive me, I only majored in chemistry and minored in mathematics so I might not be as good as this as a political reporter at the Washington Post but let’s assume 100 votes in the caucus.  25% of those votes are Mormon and 95% of those are going to vote for Romney.  That’s 22 votes.  But last polls in Nevada had Gingrich at 25% – or in our model 25 votes.  So how precisely does Romney win if only Mormons vote for him?  And then, all those non-Mormon votes that Romney just gave up are gong to land somewhere.

And what about that canard that “Mormons vote in unison?” The most quoted Mormon pundit this cycle is Joanna Brooks.  She has risen to the defense of Mormonism many times, but she also is not afraid to take it head-on, and I could be wrong, but a Romney vote is not likely from her.  Mormons in Nevada, all 140,000 of them may vote more or less in lockstep, but in California, or urban Utah – I’m not buying it.  Will the majority of Mormons vote for Romney?  Sure, but not in lockstep.

What is all this really?  Just an attempt to paint Mormons as a creepy cult.  Obviously any large group that would be that single-minded would be both creepy and cultic.  (Unless of course you are a knee jerk liberal, in which case spouting the “party line” is just reasonable.)  The latest raft of stories that attempt to be balanced by calling all the Mormon attention a “mixed blessing (LA Times) or wearing out the alliterative “Mormon Moment” meme (Politico) by their very nature make Mormons seem “odd” because they have to be explained.  I am sure Lowell could cite any number of misunderstandings and misrepresentations in these pieces, but I am concerned that the very existence of these articles, even if correct, has a subliminal effect.

There are also attacks that are far less that subtle.  Dana Milbank writes about a cousin Romney has never met that has some “issues” to say the least.  Here is the funny part:

This isn’t necessarily bad news for Mitt Romney. In most cases, family antics are more embarrassing than politically damaging. And the emergence of a “crazy cousin” might remind voters that Romney, a candidate who too often comes across as programmed, is just like the rest of us.

In other words, “This isn’t really news, but I just spent a whole column on it reminding you that Romney is a Mormon and some people don’t like that.”  I don’t know what’s worse, that people write such transparent drivel or that a significant number of people fail to see through it.

In the meantime, Romney has come out hard defending the Catholic Church against the latest assault by the Obama administration in an op-ed.  Coverage here, highlights here, full text here.  But there remains a messaging problem.  This is only making it through the conservative outlets.  (The left-leaning outlets have their own truly misleading spin.)  The MSM just is not covering the issue left, right or center.

Romney alone has a big enough profile currently to push this issue onto the front pages.  Should he do so?  I am sure many are thinking that since this is a part of the larger issue of Obamacare that handling that issue will handle this one.  True enough.  However, it is not all about the issue.  Romney, as the frontrunner and presumptive nominee, needs to begin his efforts to unite Republicans.   Getting loud and proud about this issue can go a long way to accomplishing that.  Not to mention it is the perfect opportunity for Romney to get indignant – something that a lot of voters seem to want to see.  To borrow some papal language – This ruling is anathema – it is worthy of strong emotion.  Romney has said “It’s not worth getting angry about.”  There is wisdom in that – anger often clouds judgement, but somethings are so heinous that they are repulsive and they deserve a visceral response.   This is one of them.

Vic Lundquist at Mitt Romney Central wrote yesterday about how many people of very serious, non-Mormon Christian faith are supporting Romney.  It’s an impressive list.  But it needs to expand.  The ruling by HHS is the perfect open door for Romney to move from being the Mormon candidate to the candidate of faith.  For some of us he has been that for a while, but a lot of people still need to get the message.  The op-ed is a great start, but unless Romney pushes hard on this – really, really hard – it will languish within the wide circle that is his supporters.  That circle needs to grow for the general.

Lowell adds . . .

Romney as the candidate of faith is an interesting idea. I agree that he should step forward as a faith-friendly, but at this point in the race he should not try to out-Santorum rick Santorum. I think the time will come when people of faith (well, most of them) will turn to Romney as their guy.

What does seem clear is that Romney himself is the one who decides on his message and the language he will use:

“There are a lot of people who make suggestions to the governor and provide drafts to him, but the governor uses a heavy red pencil” in his speeches, said spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom. “Everything that he says — whether it’s at a news conference, a debate, or a formal speech — flows from his own pen. He is ultimately his own speechwriter.”

For his own reasons (at which I can only guess) Gov. Romney has taken a very measured approach to discussions about faith.  I can’t say that I blame him, since he can’t say anything right about that subject in the eyes of so many people, including prominently the MSM that filters and repackages his statements.

Even on the conservative side there is constant niggling about what Romney says, as is evident in Stephen F. Hayes’ latest explanation of why Romney makes conservatives nervous.  Predictably, Hayes concludes his piece wishing Romney were more like someone else.  At least this time it’s a living person, Marco Rubio, and not Ronald Reagan, who never made mistakes or misstatements and was consistently and reliably conservative on every issue. (Insert eye-rolling smiley face here.)

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Simply put, some choices are a matter of simple preference, or taste, and some choices need more careful consideration.  My issue with weight control means that I cannot make my dining selection based on what I prefer, but rather I must make them based on what can allow me to sustain my weight both physically and psychologically.  Thus while I would greatly prefer an almost immeasurable array of things to one of those boxes for my evening meal, its ease of preparation (keeping me out of the kitchen which always leads to snacking) and controlled portions (meaning I can eat everything I see and not have overeaten in the process) makes it the meal of choice for me.

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote on the impending IPO of Facebook and carried on at great length about the marketing value of the “Like” button.  “Like” at Facebook is a simple thing – it is a statement of preference.  Increasingly the force of marketing tempts us to invest in our preferences rather than in what reason and circumstances say we should.  How many people are overextended on credit cards, not because they are out of work and used them to get by, but because they simply overbought?

Don’t get me wrong, following your taste or preference is harmless within certain constraints.  It’s a great way to decide what to watch on TV tonight, provided your tastes do not run to the obscene – in which case you have with television the same kind of issues I have with food.   But there are some decisions that simply demand we set our preferences aside, or at least deeply subordinate them, in favor of our reason and a sober assessment of circumstances.

Buying a house would be one example.  Before I can even begin to concern myself with things like style and floor plan, I must seriously look at costs and financing.  Once I have determined the price I can afford then I can use matters of taste to differentiate amongst the available houses in that range.  If my “dream house” costs more than I can afford it must stay a dream.

This same principle holds when it comes to our political decisions.  I was deeply struck a few days ago by a NRO piece by Wesley J. Smith:

When Pliny the Younger was a provincial governor in the Roman Empire, he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking whether he should execute Christians who refused to burn incense in worship of the emperor. Pliny, in keeping with the customs of the empire, did not care about forcing Christians to believe that the emperor was a god. But in public they had to behave as if they did. Thus, the Christians were in the dock not so much because of their faith in a risen Christ as over their willful refusal to declare themselves part of the reigning social order.

I thought of Pliny when I read that the Obama administration, in creating specific rules to implement Obamacare, will require all employers (with a very narrow exemption discussed below) to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services free of charge — even if the employer is a religious organization and doing so violates its doctrine. I also recalled the times that President Obama and other members of his administration have supported “freedom of worship.” However, as in Pliny’s time, “freedom of worship” is not the same thing as “freedom of religion.” The former means that one may believe whatever one wants and worship privately without interference, whereas the latter allows one freedom to live in the world at large consistent with one’s faith tenets, even if they are not endorsed by the state.

That distinction between religion and worship is an extraordinary observation.  Smith goes on about its political consequences and Roman Catholic concerns, but it is deeper than that still.  It is particularly pertinent to Evangelicals, and even Protestant Christianity generally.  Within these circles there is something called the “Worship Wars.”  Google the term and you will be amazed how much discussion there is about it.  Essentially the battle is between organ music dominant liturgical forms of worship and “modern” guitar music dominated “freer” forms of worship.  Much of the fight centers on matters of taste in music and other forms of religious expression.  But in the fight people often neglect that there are consequences that go far beyond simple matters of taste.

One of the outfalls of this “inside baseball” battle has been that many, many people have come to confuse “worship” with Church.  This is something I could go on about until well past the time your interest waned completely, but let’s focus on the fact that this confusion has deep political consequences.  Smith’s piece looks at some of the consequences on a policy level, but I want to examine it on a retail politics level.  Obama is flat out betting on the fact that most people are stuck in this confusion and cannot tell the difference between worship and religion – or more directly they simply think worship IS religion.

How else could Obama allow the abysmal ruling vis-a-vie forcing Catholic institutions to provide insurance that provides for medical services antithetical to church teaching and come out just a few days later and at the National Prayer Breakfast sound just like a preacher?  There are many, many theological, policy and hermeneutical nits to pick with the president’s prayer breakfast speech, but I just want to focus on the incredible chutzpah  (to borrow a term from yet another religious group) of such seemingly diametrically opposed actions.

But for those actions to be diametrically opposed, religion has to be a matter of more than taste.  Yet as the “worship wars” indicate, for thousands and thousands of Americans religion is little more than a matter of taste.

When I started thinking about this whole “taste and thought” thing I was going to write about it in response to all the people I have heard on talk radio and elsewhere in the last several weeks talking about how Gingrich resonated with them and expressed their feelings (a matter more or less of taste) and they simply did not care about the reality of the politics on the ground (a matter of thought.)  That still applies, but this has turned into something much more important.

I am deeply concerned that if people continue to view religion primarily as a matter of taste we are lost.  There are undoubtedly some that will tell me I am part of the problem having insisted these many years that Mormons deserve a place at the table.  Read Smith -  once we understand the difference between religion and worship then we can begin to truly understand what freedom of religion really is  and come to understand its necessity for the operation of our nation.

It is time for those of us of faith to engage our brains and subordinate our taste to our reason.  There is simply too much at stake.

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Essentially, the Mormon issue has shown local appeal, but is not playing generally – and might even be backfiring with moderates and independents.  Gingrich misplayed it in Florida and got trounced.  Santorum’s surrogates played it and he had no traction at all.  (Note to Santorum – lose this guy and lose him publicly.  The plausible deniability is spent.)  Iowa was a virtual tie and the Evangelical vote split in Florida.  You can bet your bottom dollar the “not Romney” votes from there will either go Romney or stay home in the general – they will not go Obama.

People may indeed think Mormonism “weird,” but in a world where we are all a little weird, we don’t like being attacked for it.  Tone matters too.  Romney payed hardball in Florida but Gingrich was just flat out nasty.  A “vitriolic” and “spiteful” Obama might not be a good idea.

Which brings me to the Obama administration’s latest swipe at folks of faith:

The Obama Administration is standing by a decision to require all insurance plans to cover the use of contraceptives, but said Friday it would give some employers an additional year to comply.

The rule, which goes into effect August 1, 2012, requires all insurance plans to cover the cost of birth control. Many non-profits with religious affiliations, such as Catholic universities and hospitals, say that will force them to violate their basic tenets.

The Department of Health and Services announced Friday those employers would have until August 1, 2013, to meet the new requirement.

The push back from the Catholic church has been enormous – you can read about here, here and here.  Politically, this is a very shrewd move on Obama’s part, even if it is onerous.  The policy is based on his conviction that “most Americans” think the religious prohibitions against contraception and abortion are “weird.”  But as things are shaping up, that conclusion has to be called into question.  By making an announcement, any announcement, he has pushed the issue to the fore so he can test the waters before the general.  By making THIS announcement he has 1) appealed to his base by keeping the policy in place, 2) appealed to moderates with the “reasonable” delay, and 3) really punted the issue into the next administration – hoping inertia, or his victory in November, will prevent it from being changed.

Unfortunately, this is policy, not simply an effort to shape public perception of someone in an election cycle.  This matters.

And It Provides Mitt Romney With An Opportunity

Tuesday our friend Timothy Dalrymple suggested some “course corrections” to Governor Romney.  Given what an effective spokesperson against a religion test Dalrymple has been this cycle, Team Romney would do well to listen.

Point #1: It’s never, never “all about the economy.”

[...]

Point #2: Don’t give up on evangelicals. Some very public evangelicals have very publicly denounced you and your faith.  Your cherished religious community, the community in which you were raised by loving parents, in which you’ve raised your own children, the same community that you have served so tirelessly over decades, was slandered as a “cult” by an influential pastor.  You, ergo, were portrayed as a cult member.  Many evangelical leaders defended this choice of wording, and few have spoken out even against the more obvious efflorescences of anti-Mormon bigotry.  To make matters worse, an entire generation of conservative evangelical activists/leaders gathered in Texas to rally around some candidate other than you.  So it would be perfectly understandable if you felt that you had little incentive — or no stomach — for further engagement with evangelicals.

[...]

Of those evangelicals who oppose you, few do so passionately, and most are compelled not by prejudice but by misinformation about your record and your positions.  In other words, many evangelicals support you now, and many more are willing to support you if they can be convinced that your stances on abortion, the family and religious liberties are sincere and impassioned, and not simply assumed for political convenience.

[...]

Point #3: Own your faith.

This may be the most important point of all.  Your discipline is the stuff of legend.  And after your father’s campaign for the presidency ran off the rails when he referred to a “brainwashing” on the Vietnam issue, the exercise of an extraordinarily meticulous self-control has become a pervasive theme in your family.  But these things are largely responsible for the “Romneybot” moniker.  Your behavior seems a little too programmed, too scripted, and therefore artificial.  It makes it hard for many people to connect with you.  And although Richard Land meant it in a different (and incorrect) sense, I believe he was inadvertently onto something when he said you’re “not Mormon enough” for many evangelicals.

You love God.  You strive to follow God’s leading in your life.  Although we would differ on the metaphysics of Christ’s nature, in practice your personal relationship with Jesus Christ looks an awful lot like the one that evangelicals enjoy.  These are not things that northeasterners typically wear on their sleeves, and your campaign is understandably reluctant to shine a spotlight on your Mormonism.  Evangelicals would grow more uncomfortable with you if they thought you were going to be making an argument on behalf of Mormonism throughout your presidency.  So you should not engage in apologetics.  But they will grow more comfortable with you if they see the depth, the vitality, and the heartfelt authenticity of your relationship with God.  They will grow more comfortable if they better understand your pastoral experience (let’s call it what it is) as ward bishop and stake president.  You have rich experiences in missions and preaching and pastoral counseling, and in all these ways you connected with ordinary people, ordinary workers, in the struggles of everyday life.

This ruling by the Obama administration gives Romney the perfect opportunity to follow this advise – simply by getting in front of the issue.  This ruling by the Obama administration could be the force that heals the rift inside the Republican coalition.  Mitt Romney in front of this issue accomplishes two very important things – it pulls social conservatives into camp Romney and in so doing it neutralizes “weird.”  If that happens, Obama will have no choice but to get shrill and Gingrich just showed us how that will go.

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Speaking to supporters on Monday, Gingrich was defiant. Enraged by Romney’s “dishonest” television ads, he pledged to stay in the hunt until the convention, almost out of spite.

[...]

Indeed, as Romney said tonight, addressing his cheering supporters, “a competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us.” If he’s right, Florida will have been a tumultuous stepping stone. If not, his negative ads, along with Gingrich’s barbs, may be only the start of an extended, bitter battle.

But a wounded animal tends to lash out and not exercise strategery.  Consider this tweet from an obvious Newt supporter:

This is why I can’t stand Mitt and a lot of his supporters…they are whine like a toddles and have the same level of self awareness of one.

COPY EDITOR!  Honestly, I thought I was bad at typing and spelling (Thank you Lowell!).  Anyway, we spent all last week looking at Gingrich’s total lack of self-awareness among his many other character flaws.  Fortunately, people are not bears.  When wounded they lash out, and they lash out with the increased vigor of an adrenaline rush.  But such adrenaline rushes also tend to block out the higher functions of the cerebral cortex.  Thus we get, “I know I am, but what are you.”  If this is what we have to worry about from a wounded Team Gingrich, I have better things to worry about.

Such as…

Mitt Romney may have taken his opposition to sound bit heaven to this morning.  He did an interview with CNN, from which a single sentence has been excerpted and is already being tweeted and facebooked and spread throughout the land:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it.”

Now, it’ll be interesting to watch this.  Romney is, of course, talking on a policy level, not a personal concern level.  But that doesn’t undo the damage such a quote can inflict.  I also think that is a much more potent weapon in the general than it is now.  So, will it be held in check or will its power be wasted by Team Gingrich?

Whatever, Team Romney needs to get on this fast and hard or else “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” is going to join “I was for the 47 billion before I was against it,” in the pantheon of killer sound bites.

Of Course, It’s Nonsense…

The benevolence of the Mormon Chruch should be more renown than it is, but nobody wants to pay attention to the good stuff about the LDS.  A South Carolina professor has now studied the vote out of that state and found that religion played a significant role.  Well shucks, we know that – and the results out of Florida confirmed it.  But people suspicious of Romney’s faith are running out of places to go.  Friend David French pointed out in a special piece for CNN that Evangelicals will soon be abandoning Gingrich in droves:

But they also understand that we don’t discard our core values for the sake of political victories. Fidelity, honesty, humility and charity matter.

No one doubts that God forgives, but only God knows Newt Gingrich’s heart.  We only know his actions, and we know that he has a history of deceiving even those who are closest to him.

Three other Republican candidates are anti-abortion. Three other Republican candidates have been faithful and honest in their personal and professional lives. With honest alternatives to choose from, evangelicals will soon abandon Gingrich.

Santorum is a good man that deserves a better shot than he has received, too late now.  Paul is a good man, but a political looney tune.  They have no place to go but to Romney.

A lot of people are worried about a divided Republican base, fortunately…

The Left Will Unite Us

The really no longer relevant NYTimes has been carrying a series of blog posts about Mormonism.  They have many ominous titles:

• A Male Dominated World
• Can a Candidate be Too Perfect?
• It May Look Good on Paper
• What Is It About Mormons?
• Mormon’s Double Legacy

My favorite is the horror movie title sounding, There is a Dark Side To Mormonism.  (Can you hear the organ sting?)  These are all far-left hits pieces about Mormon being “anti-gay” or believing that the sexes are actually, you know, different from one another.  This is all stuff we conventional Christians hold very much in common with Mormons.  I believe come the general election, given this kind of attack, we will see our similarities more than our differences.

Besides, according to the left we are all crazy:

Coming this spring: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality by Chris Mooney.

Of course.

©2012 Article VI Blog. All Rights Reserved.

What a 10 days this has been.  It started with with both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum receiving heinously anti-Mormon introductory comments at speeches.  It ended with Newt Gingrich saying that Mitt Romney had no understanding of religious liberty or conscious, and revelations that Sarah Palin manages her Facebook page in a blatantly anti-Mormon fashion.  WOW!

And yet, with all that religious bile spilled, Romney won going away.  Well that is except among Evangelicals.  According to USAToday exit polling Romney barely edged out Gingrich among those that professed to be “a born-again or evangelical Christian” 38% to 37%.  In the words of the immortal Mr. Spock, “Fascinating Captain.”  Another curious fact is that Jews comprised a mere 1% of the Republican electorate today.  Michael Medved tweeted:

“Koshergate” apparently backfired-absurd Gingrich claim that Mitt denied kosher food to Holocaust survivors!

Medved claimed on a Hugh Hewitt radio interview that “Koshergate” is what kept Jewish Republicans home.  This may account for why noted leftie Frank Rich claims:

Rich added, “It’s almost as if he’s closeted about his religion and I think that makes him seem fake.”

People are not truning out because of the religious incivility, so if you’re a leftie – keep ‘em home.

When I went looking for a video of Gingrich’s abysmal post-result speech, I found it here and noted this in the comments:

How Glenn Beck can NOT say that Romney is a progressive is beyond me It must be that Mormon brother hood

So, here’s what we really know.  Evangelical heavy South Carolina has a clear distaste for a Mormon candidate.  Exit polls and reports from GOTV callers seem to back this up.  Evangelicals in Florida don’t care for him much either, but given the much more diverse nature of Florida they don’t matter.  Most importantly, Florida looks a lot more like the nation as a whole than South Carolina does.

Everyone seems to think these results are determinative, even if the primary race is not over.  So, let’s presume Romney will win the nomination and ask if the religion question can still hurt us if it is played heavily in the primary, as it has been to date.  The answer seems to be that it clearly can.  Amongst all but the Evangelicals, the religion issue seems to have become distasteful.  Amongst Jews, who would have a particularly sensitive set of feelers to religious discrimination, it appears to be driving them away in droves.

Thus the real danger presented by Gingrich’s continued presence in the race, particularly if he continues in the shrill and nasty fashion he has, is that the moderates and independents on whom general elections always lie are going to be turned off to the Republican side of things.  Fortunately, there are ultra-left places like Gawker and HuffPo just chomping at the bit to go all “Mormons are weird,” which should act as a counterbalance to that force.  However, Obama does not seem to get smeared with the same brush as his media allies nearly so much as Romney will get smeared by a brush that should really only paint Gingrich and his increasingly small band of devotees.

It’s time to corner Gingrich, we simply cannot afford to let him appear to be a part of the Republican mainstream, not if he is going to continue to operate in this fashion.  Gingrich’s non-concessionary speech struck me as someone that was trying to get his arms around his particular niche audience.  I did not hear third party threats so much as I heard the kind of rhetoric one might expect when trying to build a social network and develop a media career.

I thought when Gingrich got into this thing it was a vanity campaign.  He was the beneficiary of a confluence of some extraordinary forces (Perry’s dismal failure coupled with pretty strong anti-Mormon sentiment) and it went to his head – he started to take himself seriously.  Tonight I heard a man returning to his original idea, with one notable exception – his audience is not where he thought it was.  His audience is amongst the more extreme and less tasteful of our conservative Republican movement.  Unlike Huckabee who after catering briefly to this element tacked center, Gingrich is tacking increasingly towards the hard and ugly right.  Huckabee has built himself a nice little media empire.  Gingrich may think that is what he is doing too, but he is so blowing his credibility that it may not materialize in the fashion he thinks it will.

But the biggest problem is he may give Obama a second term in the effort.  We CANNOT let that happen.

The best place to start is to steal an issue from Gingrich.  He prominently featured a discussion of the Obama adminsitration’s recent move against faith-based health care providers.  The Catholic Church is coming out on this in the strongest possible terms.  Mitt Romney needs to get in front of this as fast as he can.  Where Gingrich appears to be religiously divisive, we need to build bridges, and hurl rocks at Gingrich to make sure we can build faster than he can destroy.

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