Sorry Mitt, that's not going to cut it

So Mitt Romney today gave what was touted to be a major speech on his Mormon Faith and the role that Faith would/should play in his candidacy and, God forbid, his presidency. The unstated reason for this is the apparent coalescing of the Religion Right behind the candidacy of Mike Huckabee, of former Southern Baptist minister and Governor of Arkansas.


However, in the speech he apparently only uttered the word "Mormon" once. And the speech amounted to a plea to Evangelicals and Fundamentalists of "can't we all get along? I hate those brown people just as much as you do."

Unfortunately for Romney, the Fundigelical concern isn't about any particular teaching or tenet of the Mormon Faith, just as they wouldn't be concerned about any particular tenet of the Jewish or Hindu or Muslim Faith.

Their concern (which only a few will ever admit openly) is that they will just not accept a non-Christian president. And they don't consider Mormonism any more Christian than they do Judaism or Islam.*

If anything, Fundigelicals are even touchier about Mormonism than they are about Judaism and Islam because Mormons claim to be Christians.

So when Romney says:

"I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind,"

He's only going to comfirm the concerns of his critics. This is the exact kind of thing that pisses his critics off to no end. The person whom Mormons refer to as "Jesus Christ" is so far removed from the person whom mainstream Christianity believes in as to constitute an entirely different religion.

This has been a brewing debate/feud over the recent years, especially as Mormonism as grown so much and attracted people away from mainline and even Evangelical Christian churches.

So, why give the speech at all, let alone so highly publicize it, if he wasn't going to address the big elephant in the room? My guess is that if/when the issue comes up again, he can say "I already addressed this" and accuse the questioner of trying to "make an issue" out of something that's already been resolved.

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* to be fair, even most mainline Christian demonination and the Catholic Church would agree that Mormonism is not consistent with or a part of the historic Christian Faith. Romney, and this post, is concerned with those Christians who would make that dealbreaker.