Will Evangelicals Vote Morman in 08?

Many people have asked my opinion of Mitt Romney's presidential bid. Each and every time it boils down to the "Mormon" issue. Will Christian conservatives vote for a Mormon in a presidential election? I regularly respond by asking them a few questions of my own. Most common in this line of inquiry is whether or not Christian conservatives would have (or would have had) any hesitation voting for a mason, a Catholic, a deist, a Unitarian, or a nominal Christian. The answers are normally no, maybe, no, no, and maybe.

As pietistic as they may claim to be, the truth of the matter is that when push comes to shove and the rubber hits the road we often do things that contradict what we profess. This is especially true in the realm of politics. Most of the people I speak with love George Washington, yet he was a mason. So is Newt Gingrich. They talk highly of JFK regardless of the fact that he was a member of the "apostate" Catholic Church. They would refuse to vote for a deist, yet they revere Thomas Jefferson. These people wouldn't vote for a Unitarian, yet almost all of them talk about how great Abraham Lincoln was. What of the nominal Christian? One need not look any further than Ronal Reagan. He, along with Lincoln, didn't care much for church attendance. In every one of these cases, Christian conservatives were far less concerned about a persons orthodoxy than they were about how he compared to the person he was running against.

So here is my answer: If the Mormon Mitt Romney wins in the primaries over the Roman Catholic RINO from NYC or the Episcopalian RINO from Arizona then the vast majority of Christian conservatives will have no problem voting for him. Then again, Christian and conservative pietism normally goes the way of the dodo on Election Day.