In the 2000 Montana GOP Primary, I voted for Rob Natelson, a Jewish Conservative as the Candidate for Governor. In 2004, I supported the re-election of Senator Michael Crapo (R-ID), a Mormon. I supported another LDS member for Governor of Idaho in the 2006 Primary. I’ve worked for two Catholic Candidates for President (John Cox and Alan Keyes.) I’ve always looked at a person’s values, not their particular faith, in choosing a candidate.
This is why I’m so offended at the suggestion of Dan Gilgoff in USA Today that the reason that Mitt Romney lost is because we Evangelicals just couldn’t bring ourselves to vote for a Mormon. I’ve followed the national conversation among Conservative Christians about Mitt Romney. Little of it centered on his Mormonism, much more on the fact of his shift on the issues.
Gilgoff cites Nancy French of the Evangelicals for Mitt blog, who was won over to the point of view that a Mormon could serve as President by the “heroic effort” against gay marriage as well as his stances on abortion and federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
I have to admit that, when I think about Mitt Romney’s fight against gay marriage in Massachusetts, heroic doesn’t necessarily come to mind. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts issued a ruling ordering the legislature to pass a law on gay marriage. The legislature did nothing, so Governor Romney took it on himself to start issuing gay marriage licenses, and thus overstepped his bounds as Executive.
From there on, Romney did fight for a change in the State Constitution, but I can’t rightfully call Mitt’s fight heroic, as he abandoned it so that he could seek higher office. How heroic is the captain that abandons his ship?
On other issues, what bothered conservative Christians I talked to was Romney’s willingness to become anything to anyone. While Evangelicals for Mitt believed his recent conversion, many of us saw an empty shell that would fill himself with whatever beliefs and stances would be necessary in order to obtain power. How could pro-life conservatives know that Mitt Romney wouldn’t discard them just as he had pro-choice liberals in Massachusetts?
Gilgoff argues that James Dobson should have used his national Focus on the Family radio show to talk about how it would be okay to vote for a Mormon for President. This most likely would have gone against the tax exempt status of the station, as there was only one Mormon in the race. In addition, Dobson stated in endorsing Huckabee after Romney’s withdrawal that he viewed Romney and Huckabee both as pro-family. Making the above suggested statements about Romney would be viewed as an endorsement, and for better or for worse, he chose not to choose.
Fundamentally, YouTube and the Internet killed the Romney Campaign. Evangelicals couldn’t believe the man who promised to be more pro-gay rights than Ted Kennedy was the defender of traditional values, that pro-choice Mitt had become pro-life Mitt in a story contradicted by the doctor he claims to have seen before his conversion and that was so unbelievable National Review’s Rick Lowry suggested he was better off not telling it.
My concern was never that Mitt Romney followed his faith too much, it was how much he was willing to compromise it. Romney was a stake President in the Mormon Church, yet somehow thought a gay pride parade celebrating homosexuality was a great campaign venue. Imagine a senior official in the Southern Baptist Convention doing that as a candidate for office.
Romney had chances to address concerns of values voters. When invited to a Values Voter debate sponsored by a broad spectrum of religious conservatives, Romney declined, and his absence spoke volumes. When Romney visited Idaho, his campaign refused to answer tough questions from Bryan Fischer of the Idaho Values Alliance. For possessing such an alleged strong social conservatism, Romney was unwilling to try and win over concerned critics and gave them even more reason to doubt his sincerity.
It also should be pointed out that Mitt Romney won the Evangelical vote in many states such as California and Michigan, he tied Huckabee for it in Florida, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. Yes, had Romney gotten unanimous support from Evangelicals, he would have won the Presidency, but Evangelicals are not unanimous and Romney gave them no reason to even get close to that threshold.
Nor, should there be a second act. Romney had all the advantages: Money, endorsements, grassroots organization. He just couldn’t get the job done because people didn’t trust him. The endorsements he got towards the end, including Rush Limbaugh’s on Super Tuesday, were the result of him being “not McCain.” Despite the collective force of most of the right side of the blogosphere, talk radio, and huge amounts of ground organization, he could not sell voters. You can blame Huckabee for this, but Huckabee’s voters’ second choice was McCain, not Romney. That’s how great Romney’s failure was.
Of course, you can find examples of anti-Mormonism. There was Bill Keller of Live Prayer shouting that a vote for Romney was a vote for the Devil, but to blame the Bill Kellers of the World (a small minority) is a cop out. Mitt Romney lost because people didn’t see him as having a core. I’d be open to supporting a genuine Conservative who happens to be a Mormon. There just wasn’t one running in this election.
