Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

The Associated Press asks the question: Will Christians back a Mormon candidate?

As a clean-living, church-going father and grandfather, Gov. Mitt Romney has a natural appeal among conservative Christians. The Massachusetts Republican, though, faces a delicate dilemma: How does a devout Mormon woo religious activists critical to winning the GOP presidential nomination when many of those same activists are openly hostile to a faith they consider no more than cult? 

I agree with Slate magazine's John Dickerson, who wrote a very good article recently urging Romney to address questions about his Mormon Church faith sooner than later. Romney, wrote Dickerson, "has also got to move fast to stop the conventional wisdom from calcifying that a Mormon can't get elected in the GOP."

Romney's Mormonism didn't prevent him from being elected governor of heavily non-Mormon - and liberal - Massachusetts. But he does need to get in front of the Mormon issue now.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, was right when he told Romney that his Mormon faith is "the elephant in the room that no one's talking about.'"

Land also said he thought Southern Baptists - the nation's largest Protestant denomination and a treasure trove of conservative and Republican voters - would look beyond religious differences to shared values. "We are voting for a commander in chief, not a pastor in chief," he said.

Land believes Romney's Mormon faith is not an insurmountable problem.

Said Land, "I think his Mormonism is going to be a bigger problem with the 'unchurched' than the 'churched'. The unchurched are fairly distrustful of and sometimes hostile of the churched, and they look upon Mormons as, sort of, religion on steroids. The churched respect people who take their faith seriously."

Romney can overcome the Mormon thing - whether or not he can convince the conservative voters who dominate the Republican primaries that he's of like mind with them on social issues rather than the moderate on social issues that he was when he ran for governor four years ago, that may be the bigger obstacle.

Washington Post writers Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray explored Romney's political conversion Thursday, saying his "rightward shift" has "has raised questions as to who is the real Mitt Romney."

To Romney's advantage, neither of the two front-runners for the GOP nomination - Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani - have close relationships with social and cultural conservatives.

Mormonism is, socially and culturally speaking, a conservative faith, which in the end may turn out to be not an obstacle so much as Romney's ace in the hole in the race for the Republican nomination.