Romney Stuck in Utah Wilderness?

by Jeremy Morrison

Does the elephant in the room sing in the Tabernacle Choir?

Why can’t GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney ever seem to seal the deal with his party. Why must a candidate nearly custom-made for the Republican ticket forever be the lack-of-a-better-candidate candidate?

Could it have something to do with the fact that Romney’s a Mormon attempting to win favor in a party packed with Evangelicals? Troy Schoonover doesn’t think so.

“In 2008 it proved it was too much to overcome,” he said. “What’s in favor of Romney this time around is people hate Obama more than Romney’s Mormonism.”

While cleaning up after a recent Republican presidential debate party, the president of the Pensacola Republic Club took a moment to ponder a Mormon’s chances on the GOP ticket. He said that attacking a person’s religion was an “unseemly” tactic.

“Doesn’t advance the conversation on what’s most important to people,” Schoonover said.
The local club president—a Romney supporter—did concede that the issue would probably arise a couple of times over the course of the campaign. Schoonover said that as time goes by additional groupings of people are marked off the acceptable-to-ridicule list; he referred to a “pecking order” and noted that it was apparently “still OK” to attack the Mormon religion.