Romney = Screwed

I thought Ross was mostly right in his critique of Ed Kilgore's take on Mitt Romney's impending speech on Mormonism. But Ed rallies with this followup:

If, on the other hand, I'm "exactly wrong" and Douthat is "exactly right," then Mitt Romney is truly screwed. What is he supposed to say about his religion? He can't do the JFK separation-of-church-and-state bit; he's in the wrong party at the wrong time of history for that approach. He can't educate evangelicals about the tenets of the LDS church; aside from being a complex endeavor, that would probably alarm listeners even more than their current vague suspicions about the Mormon "cult." So if he also can't even appeal to the deep cultural conservative consanguinity of Mormons with evangelicals, he might as well cancel the speech and hope for the best.

And, indeed, Romney does seem truly screwed. There's just no way to do what he's doing. Mitt Romney, Mormon, worked back when "Mitt Romney" denoted a culturally moderate politician. But he decided that a culturally moderate politician couldn't win a Republican Party presidential nomination, so he remade himself as a cultural conservative. But a culturally conservative Mormon is screwed outside of the Mormonism-heavy states of the West. And, obviously, the main driving force of his candidacy has always been the absence of alternatives who appeal to Christian conservatives anyway. He still has that going for him to some extent, so maybe he'll somehow manage to muddle through. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for pro-life voters to remember this guy named John McCain.

Comments

While a full explanation of Mormon theology might frighten away Evangelicals and Catholics, the prospect of ruling your own planet while having neverending sex with unlimited spirit babes might cement the hedonist vote for the Mitt-Bot

Posted by Colonel Danite | December 4, 2007 5:11 PM

He still has that going for him to some extent, so maybe he'll somehow manage to muddle through.

What Mitt has going for him is he's loaded. But I think what he's going for is he wants to emphasize his faith while downplaying his religion. In other words, he wants to take hold of that fuzzy middle where he's really religious, but nobody cares about what specific religion he believes in. Quite a feat.

Posted by Dan the Man | December 4, 2007 5:15 PM

It's easy. All he has to do is talk about God. The Book of Mormon is a New Testament for people who don't like the New Testament. God in the Book of Mormon is a caricature of the brutal, prideful, vengeful God of the Old Testament. He is constantly reaching down and killing people. It is an obsessive pattern throughout the book. And this is exactly what the Republican base wants to hear. Fudge the denominational nomenclature and just harp on the magnificent righteous wrath of God--and its desired targets.

Posted by Frank Wilhoit | December 4, 2007 5:33 PM

"And, indeed, Romney does seem truly screwed. There's just no way to do what he's doing."

Yup. The Romney-Giuliani race has always been the fool's analysis.

But I fail to see what any of this has to do with the Billy King firing or the Anderson Varejo signing.

Posted by Petey | December 4, 2007 5:37 PM

Yeah. Bad move on Romney's part. I don't know who is advising him he should do a speech. It's obviously a reaction to Huckabee's rise. Does anybody really think that an evangelical who thinks Mormonism is a satanic cult is going to vote for Romney because of an eloquent speech, especially now that the former's got a bonafide political playa he can vote for named Mike Huckabee?

I'm not one of those who has been of the opinion that Romney is in such bad shape merely because of Huckabee's rise. I mean, Mitt still has a month or so to soften up Huckabee with negative ads, and there are a number of issues he could use: Huckabee's non-hatred of illegal immigrants, for instance, and his failure to embrace torture, and also his preference for not funding government via debt. Romney, with lots of money, with a solid foundation in NH and Michigan, and with a disciplined, on-message campaign, should remain a very formidable candidate as long as he doesn't badly underperform to expectations in Iowa (and those expectations are now muted, given what the polls are predicting about a Huckabee win). Indeed, I'd say up to now he's still the favorite to win the nomination, especially with Rudy showing signs of implosion.

But this speech business strikes me as a real overreaction to an issue most people -- even a majority of GOP primary voters -- don't really care about. To most Americans, Mormons are nice, large, hardworking, sober Caucasians with beautiful teeth and big families. A bit funny in the underwear department, perhaps, but certainly well-within the American mainstream. Heck, I'd even go so far as to say Mormons strike me in some ways as being quintessentially American.

Mitt better hit this one out of the park. If not, he's leaving the door wide open for a McCain surge.

Posted by Jasper | December 4, 2007 5:40 PM

The wrong party? You expect to find someone like him in the explicitly hostile to religion Democratic party?

Posted by James Robertson | December 4, 2007 5:44 PM

I really don't think he is trouble here. Theoretically, he should be, but no. All he has to do is talk about God and some Christian values. That is enough for most people. He doesn't have to win over intellectuals or theologians here.

Posted by Neil | December 4, 2007 5:44 PM

I agree with Neil, but will add one thing.

In addition to saying that he shares fundamental values, he needs to look America square in the eye and promise that nobody in the Mormon church will be calling the shots for him...ever.

I'm a Mormon and I know a lot of people think that we can't make that statement while being honest and that's just not true. We believe in being subject to governments, and that even goes for our prophet. The church does not tell us "what to think", but rather "how to think" and that is very different. You can teach Mitt Romney and Harry Reid both "how to think" and get completely different political opinions.

"I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves" - Joseph Smith

Posted by Elbeau | December 4, 2007 5:51 PM

I say this as a still-on-the-membership-rolls Southern Baptist: the GOP nomination battle will come down to Huckabee and an anti-Huckabee, probably McCain, if he wins New Hampshire (and there's a real opening for him there). As I've been saying for months, evangelical Southerners will never, ever vote for a Mormon and they will never, ever vote for Giuliani.

They've found their guy at last: the Huck Express is leaving the station, folks. At the very least he's a shoo-in for the VP slot. We better figure out how to damage him, and fast. Otherwise, a swooning national press corps will hand us Bush without the leavening Ivy League-WASP influence. Say hello to the FMA, criminalized abortion, and creationism in public schools -- all the goals my relatives have craved for so many years.

Posted by BryklynLibrul | December 4, 2007 5:52 PM

When Mo Udall ran for president in '76, the only Mormon question he had to deal with was LDS discrimination against blacks. As a lapsed ("jack") Mormon, Udall said he had left the church and opposed its discrimination. However, the whispering campaign on the issue might have cost him the Michigan primary.

Posted by Arrow | December 4, 2007 5:53 PM

The wrong party? You expect to find someone like him in the explicitly hostile to religion Democratic party?

What an idiotic statement. The Democrats' Senate Majority Leader-- the most powerful or second most powerful national Democratic politician currently, is a Mormon.

And more generally, the Democratic Party is so "hostile" to religion that an atheist or an agnostic can only quite rarely get elected to any federal office, and the major presidential candidates clamour about how religious they are.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 4, 2007 6:03 PM

Read the left blogosphere lately? If so, you'll understand why the Democratic party is seen as hostile to religion

Posted by James Robertson | December 4, 2007 6:08 PM

I also find it perplexing that the Republican "base" might turn out to be willing to alienate 2% of the nation's population during a time when Presidential elections are decided by a 1% margin.

I've got to say, it generally sucks to be a Mormon in this election. While the democrats do welcome Harry Reid (and that does say something for them), statistically most of us don't consider Harry our political hero. We are generally very conservative, but now the "great conservative" party is telling us that we can vote for them as long as they never have to vote for us - because of our religion. Now Mitt is an open target for political flip-flopping, but polling shows that as a minor issue compared to the "great Mormon question". Oh brother...it it just sucks.

Posted by Elbeau | December 4, 2007 6:10 PM

To clarify a little:

Democrats welcome people of all faiths...as long as they know that their beliefs are automatically offensive and cannot ever pass beyond the realm of their lips.

Posted by Elbeau | December 4, 2007 6:13 PM

"But a culturally conservative Mormon is screwed outside of the Mormonism-heavy states of the West"

Agreed. Next thing you know, he'll think he can get himself elected Governor of Massachusetts.

Posted by ostap | December 4, 2007 6:19 PM

But a culturally conservative Mormon is screwed outside of the Mormonism-heavy states of the West.

Sorry for showing up late, but the only way to reach this conclusion is to accept that evangelicals won't vote for a Mormon. And yet the polls show him winning in South Carolina and picking up support in Florida.

Posted by kwo | December 4, 2007 6:24 PM

I keep hearing these things about Democrats being hostile to religion. Apparently vehemently anti-religious voices in the blogosphere constitutes a political party hostile to religion. Who knew?

Posted by Matthew Struhar | December 4, 2007 6:38 PM

How different might this race be if Romney was running as a Dem?

He might well be the front runner.

Posted by Don | December 4, 2007 6:39 PM

But a culturally conservative Mormon is screwed outside of the Mormonism-heavy states of the West

Ostap is right to point out that this is imprecise. In mostly secular areas, voters are unlikely to hold a candidate's faith against him, whether he's a Mormon or a Muslim. But in strongholds of non-Mormon religious conservatism, from Kansas to SC, it's bound to get worse for Romney now that Huckabee has emerged as a credible candidate.

As a skeptical agnostic, it's all one to me; indeed I'm amused that the Mormon tales are considered outlandish, while equally preposterous stories (albeit from an earlier time) are well within the pale of respectability.

Posted by kth | December 4, 2007 6:40 PM

ostap,

way to completely miss the point.

When Romney acted like a social moderate his mormonism wasn't an issue and he could be elected governor of a liberal state.

He is now trying to run as a cultural conservative and win Republicna primaries dependant on cultural conservative voters who will have a problem with his mormonism.

See the difference?

Posted by Eric K | December 4, 2007 6:52 PM

Yeah, I think a lot of people are tone-deaf about this. While evangelicals, especially, are very suspicious of Mormonism, they still see Mormons as allies in the culture war. The fact of the matter is that today's Mormons are the closest thing there is to cultural conservatives' view of 50s America.

A revealing comparison is the evangelical community's response to Mel Gibson and his film. There's few things that evangelicals distrust more than the Catholic Church. But if there are the "right" kind of Catholics, in the estimation of conservative evangelicals, then it's the ultra-conservative Catholics like Gibson and his father.

I doubt that there's any other large religious group in the US outside of evangelicals who are as truly committed to cultural conservatism as are Mormons. And evangelicals know this.

However, the problem here is the question of how well Romney himself holds to those values--or, more precisely, how confident evangelicals are that he does. Having been elected governor of Massachusetts is a bit of a stumbling block.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | December 4, 2007 6:57 PM

kth,

It all comes down to when they were written. Religious liberals can read the bible as alegorical and read symbolically, you can get value from the stories and believe in God without having to take the bible literally.

Sure Fundamentalists don't beleive this and do take it literally, which is why they aren't taken seriously. The problem with a Republican Mormon candidate is he is dependant on the votes of fundamentalists.

Put simply a liberal Christian who reads the Bible symbolically can accept a Mormon but a fundamentalist can't and still be a fundamentalist.

Posted by Eric K | December 4, 2007 7:00 PM

Eric,

1. Romney has won in a place where logic would dictate he couldn't win.

2. While I certainly can't claim any intimate knowledge of the thought patterns of southern evangelicals, MY and his commenters aren't the source I would use to fill that gap.

3. I've read the same sort of analysis of Giuliani's chances, but when I looked just now at the SC poll (SC is outside the Mormon west), Romney's in 1st and Giuliani's in 3rd.

Conclusion: "screwed" he's not, never mind the "analysis" to the contrary.

Posted by ostap | December 4, 2007 7:39 PM

ostap,

Again you are completely missing the point. Romney won in Mass when he ran as a moderate, he was pro-choice; pro gay rights, sheesh in his Senate bid he ran to Kennedy's left on the issue. He won in MASS by being a socially moderate, nonideological technocrat, the basic profile of a MASS governor (Weld for example)

Now he is trying to run as a social conservative in a national republican primary, a completely different thing. Liberal and moderate MASS voters didn't care about his mormonism becasue he never made it an issue and on the issues where it would come up he opposed the mormon positions. Now he is trying to appeal to the most conservative republican primary voters by saying he shares all their views, and they are the people most likley to be bothered by his mormonosm.

Posted by Eric K | December 4, 2007 7:55 PM

ostap,

Again you are completely missing the point. Romney won in Mass when he ran as a moderate, he was pro-choice; pro gay rights, sheesh in his Senate bid he ran to Kennedy's left on the issue. He won in MASS by being a socially moderate, nonideological technocrat, the basic profile of a MASS governor (Weld for example)

Now he is trying to run as a social conservative in a national republican primary, a completely different thing. Liberal and moderate MASS voters didn't care about his mormonism becasue he never made it an issue and on the issues where it would come up he opposed the mormon positions. Now he is trying to appeal to the most conservative republican primary voters by saying he shares all their views, and they are the people most likley to be bothered by his mormonosm.

As to SC, Hukabee hasn'tt started campaigning there yet, I imagine that just lieke in Iowa once a real fundamentalist shows up they will flock to him.

Posted by Eric K | December 4, 2007 7:56 PM

Iowa in a way has been very warped in being the 1st State because political activists vs. mainstream Americans dominate the Caucuses. That gives nutroots and evangelicals and special interest groups more clout than in other primaries.

Rudy is imploding in scandal, as we in the periphery of NYC long-predicted would happen. There are no true proven executive leaders on the Dem side other than the hapless Richardson. On the Republican side you have military leaders McCain and Duncan Hunter (both commanded in wartime, faced death), and execs Huckabee, Giuliani, and Romney....with Romney and Giuliani having the best track record of fixing up major messes.

And Romney has a better shot if he uses his speech not to do theology education - but to prove he is not plastic, as human & authentic as anyone and tolerant of all faiths and groups. And maybe to project what no candidate other than John Edwards has done so far - what his vision for America is, what cultural or religious litmus tests, if any, are true to America and it's Constitution that specifies the voters and authorities should not impose religious tests for those seeking office.

Huckabee might lay on the "Pastor Mike" and good 'ol religion real thick and even take Iowa, but that would be a pyrric victory in casting Huckster outside the Bible Belt as a Fundie Creationist intent on imposing his morality on us in terms of abortion, loving illegal aliens, banning "bad food", banning smoking in public.

I've met and worked with Mormons in business, in the service, my brother-in-law is Wyoming LDS. One of my neighbors when I lived in Florida was Mormon..

My opinion, and others in similar experience - is "no better Americans than Mormons". Even with their squirrely beliefs, because they are moral, honest, hard-working people with little crime or problems. Others may be their equals, yes. But none better.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 4, 2007 8:40 PM

"And, obviously, the main driving force of his candidacy has always been the absence of alternatives who appeal to Christian conservatives anyway. He still has that going for him to some extent, so maybe he'll somehow manage to muddle through."

It's time for you, Matt, to explain why you discount Huckabee. Is it his opposition to waterboarding? His record on taxes? His desire to close Gitmo? Are Christian conservatives really going to abandon him for those reasons? I have my doubts. Please do a lengthy Huckabee post, we'd like to know what you think.

Posted by Connor | December 4, 2007 8:43 PM

Color me redundant: Southern evangelicals will never, ever vote for a Mormon. Anyone who thinks otherwise is totally ignorant of the peculiar ways in which that culture thinks and acts. Take it from someone with 40 + years' worth of personal experience: Ain't. Gonna. Happen. Especially now that a credible alternative has emerged. Josh Marshall is now citing a national poll that has Huckabee within three points of Rudy.

Posted by BryklynLibrul | December 4, 2007 8:46 PM

In spite of what various celebs are reputed to have said, you really can't fake authenticity. Forbes and McCain both tried to remodel themselves as religious wingnuts between elections, and now Romney. Nobody believed Steve, who was just your basic trust-fund millionaire riding the Laffer Curve into well-deserved obscurity, and Johnny Mac, having dissed the Falwells on the first go-round, tried to embrace them this time and will probably meet with a similar fate. Likewise with the Mittster, who, in a classic case of bad timing, feigned liberalism when the fundos were in the ascendancy, and has shifted right just when they're about to take a fall.
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
(I hope this isn't wishful thinking.)

Posted by Henderstock | December 4, 2007 8:49 PM

1. Romney has won in a place where logic would dictate he couldn't win.

Romney won as a Republican running for an office which Republicans had won 3 previous elections in a row. How did "logic dictate" that he "couldn't" win?

Anyway, echoing BryklynLibrul, evangelicals aren't going to vote for a Mormon. What we basically had over the last year was a bunch of empty hype about Romney coming from a bunch of secular conservatives and swooning secular members of the press corps who are both completely clueless about the fact that a rank and file evangelical Republican primary voter thinks that Romney is a member of a cult.

Huckabee was the quintessential "value investment." It was clear 9 months ago that the evangelicals in the Republican base were going to fall all over themselves for him, it just took a while for the rest of the "market" to discover him.

Posted by Tyro | December 4, 2007 9:40 PM

Romney made a strange and very crucial mistake early on by positioning himself as the only option for cultural conservatives, without bothering to add the requisite militarism component. If he'd come out blazing on abortion AND the GWOT, I think he'd find a wider base of support. Right now, voters primarily motivated by hatred and fear of foreigners are going elsewhere.

Posted by Jason C. | December 5, 2007 12:48 AM

The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) is often accused by Evangelical pastors of not believing in Christ and, therefore, not being a Christian religion. This article http://mormonsarechristian.blogspot.com/ helps to clarify such misconceptions by examining early Christianity's comprehension of baptism, the Godhead, the deity of Jesus Christ and His Atonement.

The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) adheres more closely to First Century Christianity and the original New Testament than any other denomination. Harper’s Bible Dictionary entry on the Trinity says “the formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found in the New Testament.” The Church believes in the New Testament, not the man-made Creeds.

Perhaps the reason the pastors denigrate the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) is to protect their flock (and their livelihood). It is encouraging that Paul Weyrich, Wayne Grudem and Bob Jones III, (along with Jay Sekulow, Mark DeMoss, and Dr. John Willke, a founder and past president of the National Right to Life Committee.) have rejected bigotry and now support Mitt Romney on the basis that he is the most moral candidate with the best qualifications.

Posted by Bot | December 5, 2007 4:57 AM

The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) adheres more closely to First Century Christianity and the original New Testament than any other denomination.

You're perfectly free to advocate for your own religion, but please don't insult our intelligence.

Posted by Tyro | December 5, 2007 9:55 PM