...can a Mormon be elected President?
In this day and age, I would like to think that religious prejudice is a long-dead issue, but there has been a lurking concern in my mind about the depth of anti-Mormon prejudice in America. Put aside the Evangelicals, there is a deep animosity against Mormons among secularists and liberals, and, perhaps, moderates. As evidence of that, keep in mind the infamous commercial during the Proposition 8 of a pair of Mormon missionaries busting into a lesbian household to rummage through their things. It was a reprehensible bit of prejudice.
Now, Roger Simon writes this about Romney's loss in South Carolina:
Believe it or not (and I didn’t think it possible), Mormonism was one reason Romney lost South Carolina. Exit polls show that most South Carolina voters wanted a candidate that shared similar religious views. Romney lost big among those voters. Note, I am not describing what ought to be, but rather what the data show is happening.
This does not bode well for Romney’s electability in the fall. Evangelicals are the base of the GOP. If they stay home, Republicans lose, like they did when they nominated the moderate John McCain. But more importantly, Catholics may decide this election in places like Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And the Catholic Church makes no secret of its view of Mormonism. An unexcited evangelical base combined with skeptical moderate Catholic voters undermines Romney’s chief campaign message of the last month — “most likely to beat Obama.” It could be a prescription for a November defeat.
Romney will spin that Florida is his firewall because he has an organization there. But he also had one in South Carolina. Tonight was a game changer.
One other thing. Romney annoyed people in South Carolina. His robo calls, from the vaunted “organization,” annoyed voters to no end. I watched someone get 5 calls in one night, many from Chris Christie. Another person is getting them in Germany in the middle of the night on her cell phone. Sometimes organization and money backfires.
Exit polls are exist polls, and if that's what they show, that's what they show.
As for Simon's point about "And the Catholic Church makes no secret of its view of Mormonism," I have to say "huh?"
Is he insinuating that there is some deep well-spring of prejudice against Mormons among Catholics. That seems to be an incredible statement. Among Catholics, there is the sense that Mormons are a kind of Protestant sect, more extreme than most, but no more extreme than many Protestant sects, including the Quakers, Christian Scientists, or any of the other strange little sects that make up Protestantism.
Certainly, the Catholic Church makes no secret of its totally accurate view that Mormon baptism doesn't qualify as baptism in the biblical sense in light of the different meaning that Mormonism attaches to the idea of the Trinity, but that level of theological nuance is sadly lost on most Catholics and other Christians.
Also, where does Simon get the data to extract this insight? Only 10% of South Carolinians are Catholic. Do we have any idea of how this scant minority of Catholics among South Carolina's Republican voters felt about Romney?
Perhaps the accurate point that we can take from Simon is that it may not take much to "poison the well" against
Romney.
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