For Romney, It's Not His Father's Campaign

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Dan Gilgoff at WashingtonPost.com has this story. He points out the different challenges Mitt faces that his father never encountered. The question of Mitt's faith is the main discussion. It's a two-page story and I'm quoting only a few paragraphs below.

Almost 40 years ago, a 21-year-old Mitt Romney watched as his father's presidential campaign stumbled to a halt. George Romney's 1968 bid for the White House failed for several reasons -- his notorious remark that U.S. generals had brainwashed him into supporting the Vietnam War, the surprise entry into the race of fellow liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller, Richard M. Nixon's establishment appeal. But his Mormonism wasn't among them.

"I don't recall ever having been asked about his beliefs or about the Mormon church," says Charles Harmon, the elder Romney's press secretary at the time. Walter DeVries, Romney's chief strategist during the race, never considered his boss's religion a political liability. "I just don't remember it coming up," he notes.

George Romney's candidacy did spark some news stories about the refusal of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to allow blacks to join the priesthood, a policy that was reversed in 1978. But his strong civil rights record as governor of Michigan inoculated him against charges of racism, and reporters otherwise paid virtually no attention to his religion.

Much of the intolerance toward his church arises from the politicization of evangelical Protestants. Before the appearance of groups such as the Moral Majority, which didn't get off the ground until a decade after George Romney's run, Southern evangelicals were politically uninvolved or tacitly Democratic. But the rise of the Christian right turned them into a key segment of the GOP's base -- a
shift that suddenly made the personal beliefs of would-be Republican presidents
very relevant. "Does anyone care about Harry Reid's Mormonism?" asks Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, referring to the Democratic Senate majority leader. "No, because he's not in the party where everyone goes out of their way to prove their piety."

For Romney, the unlucky coincidence is that as evangelicals have grown more political and more Republican, many have also become increasingly suspicious of his church. With the worldwide Mormon population exploding from 3 million in 1971 to nearly 13 million today, many evangelicals see the LDS church not just as a cult but also as competition in winning converts.

Like his father, Mitt Romney may never make it to the White House. But if his faith is what holds him back, then a nation founded on religious tolerance will have proved itself less accepting than it was four decades ago -- when a Mormon lost for reasons relating entirely to this world, not the next.

Very interesting piece. I think Mitt is winning this battle one baby step at a time.