Mitt Romney’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination has yielded a record number of stories with some variation on the title “The Mormon Problem.” They collectively argue that Romney’s Mormonism will make it hard for him to win the nomination because evangelicals are not fans of the Mormon church, and even harder to win the election because Democrats are more anti-Mormon than GOP primary voters.
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The stories are overblown, at least where Republicans are concerned, and I suspect the same is true for the Democrats, as well. Baptist Rev. Robert Jeffress is the Rick Perry supporter who made headlines when he called Mormonism a “cult” and said Romney is not a Christian. This was treated as a “bigotry eruption” even though Jeffress also called Romney a “good, moral person” and said he’d vote for him over President Barack Obama, a former agnostic turned Christian. It’s true the Republican electorate is having a hard time swallowing the idea of Romney as the nominee. But there’s a lot more to digest than his Mormonism.
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