When a supporter in Council Bluffs, Iowa, nudged Mitt Romney to defend his Mormon faith last week, the Republican frontrunner said he wasn’t planning to. Shouldn’t he be pushing back, she wanted to know, against those who, like his rival Rick Perry’s supporter the Rev. Robert Jeffress, call the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a cult and insist that Romney is not a Christian?
“I don’t think so,’’ the former Massachusetts governor said at a campaign stop in strongly evangelical western Iowa. “I think a great majority of American people want to select the person who is the most capable of getting our country going again with strong values, a strong economy and a strong military; a religious test shouldn’t be applied to people who are running for office,’’ he said to applause. “But,’’ he added, “I am shaped by the Judeo-Christian values which I have and hope that those will hold me in good stead as they have so far.”