Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

"I don't believe that conservative Christians in large numbers will vote for a Mormon but that remains to be seen, I guess," Mr. Dobson said on a syndicated radio program hosted by a conservative commentator, Laura Ingraham.

Mr. Dobson, the founder of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, did not say why Christians would fail to support Mr. Romney. Mr. Dobson also acknowledged that the governor's stands on social issues are similar to those of many religious conservatives.

"He's a nice guy. He's a very attractive man. He's got a beautiful wife and a lot of his principles and values are consistent with ours," Mr. Dobson said....

While some Christians have denounced Mormonism as a heretical sect, not all conservative Christians agree that Mr. Romney's faith will hurt him with the religious right.

"If he's pro-life, pro-family, I don't think he'll have any problem getting the support of evangelical Christians," a founder of the Moral Majority, Rev. Jerry Falwell, told the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mo. earlier this year.

While Falwell has always been more ecumenical in his religious coalition building, begining with the generically named Moral Majority, many others are far more uneasy managing religious differences, as Muslims have certainly seen since 9/11.

This ought to give Mormons and people of a wide range of religious faith everywhere pause. James Dobson, and certainly many others beleive that most conservative Christians would never vote for a Mormon, just because he is a Mormon.  

Nevertheless, conservative, religious Mormons are an intergral part of the religious right. Certainly one of the ugliest features of various elements of the religious right, are attitudes of religious supremacy that mark not only their religous view, but deeply infuse their religious views.  This is why all should be concerned that the claims that America was founded as a Christian nation, while not only demonstrably false, are part of a profound attack on constitutional guarantees of religious equality and religious freedom. Signficant elements of the Christian Right believe that none but Christians are fit to govern, and that their tactical allies in the wider coalition we call the religious right are ultimately, expendible.

Meanwhile, Romney seeking to broaden his appeal to the hard core Christian conservative base, entertained the Values Voters Summiteer by serviing up red meat rhetoric about same sex marriage and ridiculing his own state.

Journalist Sara Posner reported for AlterNet:  

To the Republicans, nothing was more important than satisfying the crowd's anti-gay zealotry, even if it meant ridiculing your own blue state or making the nutty assertion that gay marriage represents the greatest threat to civilized society, while not mentioning terrorism, genocide, or the two Americas (the John Edwards version, not the George Allen version).

Uttering the word "Massachusetts" to this crowd was akin to speaking of Sodom, provoking titters, boos, and hisses from the crowd throughout the day. Mention of the New York Times (which at one point Perkins cited as the anti-Bible), Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Rosie O'Donnell, or CNN inspired similar venom. Even Mitt Romney, who has now surpassed John McCain in sucking up to his party's rightist fringe (enough to delight Bill O'Reilly), felt compelled to join in with ridiculing the state of which he is chief executive. But more telling of Romney's unfitness for the presidency was his absurd prioritizing of the nation's most pressing issues. Topping Romney's list, of course, was gay marriage, which he ranked ahead of jihadists, the Asian challenge to America's economy, excessive government spending and our overconsumption of oil on his list of top five issues facing America.

Unsurprisingly, the Utah press has covered Romeny's camaign with considerable interest, and recently reported on soon to be ex-governor's difficutlies:

The Salt Lake City Tribune reported: on a recent spurt of new blogs supporting Romhey's campaign,including Evangelicals for Mitt.  

And Evangelicals for Mitt.com is tackling what is expected to be Romney's largest hurdle to the presidency: his Mormon religion.

   Many evangelical groups consider Mormons to be cultists, a point the Evangelicals for Mitt site is hoping to counter by pointing out how Romney is the "best candidate for people of faith," according to founder Charles Mitchell.

   "A lot of people think that the fact that he's a Mormon is going to be a huge problem, if not a deal-breaker for Evangelicals, who are a big part of the Republican base," Mitchell says. "That shouldn't be the case. . . . The 2008 election is for president, not for pastor."

Pehaps it is time to start asking.