Mitt Romney has two problems.
First, he's a Mormon.
Important clarification: He doesn't have a problem with me. I would vote for a Democrat who's a Mormon. If Harry Reid (you know, the Senate Majority Leader) were running for office in my state, I would choose him over the right-wing alternative. His policy squares with mine. He could be an atheist, a Baptist, a Buddhist, whatever, I really couldn't possibly care less. I want left-wingers in office enacting left-wing policies, thwarting right-wing initiatives.
Yeah, well, as luck would have it, Mitt Romney isn't running for my vote, for the Senate in a reliably blue state, or for governor again, as a moderate Republican.
He's running for the chance to represent the Republicans in an election for President of the United States. And to get there, he needs to win over the people who vote in primaries.
And yeah. Between 40 and 60 percent of the R primary electorate, depending on the state, is made up of evangelical Christians. About half of those of those believe Mormonism is a cult. Trust my numbers, or just do the math: roughly, a quarter of R primary voters gladly place Romney in the Cult Box.
Important fact: Christians classify their Mormon brethren in that uncomplimentary way for multiple reasons. But chief among those is that in LDS circles, the Book of Mormon is viewed as equal to the Bible.
Understatement: fair or unfair, when the LDS church went that route, it was practically asking for the "cult" label. Denying the divinity of Christ is the biggest massive breach of orthodoxy I can imagine, and right behind that, in second place, lies messing with the ultimate authority of the Word of God.
Like I said, that's neither here nor there for me. I have my own tenuous relationship with so-called orthodox dogma. (Really? A virgin birth? Are you serious?)
But again, I'm not voting in the Republican primaries. It's most definitely here and there for a large swath of the people Romney needs to reach.
When combined with his propensity to, um, how to say this -- his propensity to let his views on certain issues "evolve," and his extremely moderate past during his governorship of Massachusetts, Romney has a big problem. He's not appealing to the people who decide if he's appealing.
So he keeps polling between 20 and 30 percent, time and again, week after week, state after state. Forgive me, but duh.
I'll be shocked if Romney garners more than a third of the Republican vote in any primary outside of New England and the Mountain West. And that's no path to the nomination.
But if not Mitt, who?
Tomorrow, I'll give newt Gingrich the same treatment. (Spoiler: The post ends with "But if not Newt, who?")
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