mitt romney

The GOP has a mess on its hands.

Marginal Republican presidential candidate previews shaming tactics of 2012.

Planets! Tablets! Underwear! When some of America’s most celebrated pundits and public intellectuals talk about Mormons, these are the images that are summoned. Ironically in this “Mormon Moment”—signaled by a hit Broadway musical, polygamous housewives on TLC, and of course two Mormon presidential candidates—Mormons, long considered quintessential “outsiders” to mainstream American culture, today find themselves at the center of the American zeitgeist. Yet it is the Mormons’ supposed theological weirdness that is the centripetal attraction.

Half the fight against bigotry might just lie in showing up. When Abraham Hassan stood up at Thursday night’s CNN debate, he introduced himself as a Palestinian-American and a Republican. Plainly, that’s not what I expected to hear.

Though Gingrich got clobbered in today’s Florida primary, his echoing of the US Bishops’ war on religion talking point is likely to make it all the way to the 2012 election.

“I think today’s anxiety about Mormonism can’t be compared to that of the past. The anti-Mormonism that was nearly universal during Smoot’s era is now a tradition maintained by a very small slice of the American population. The Republican primaries gave that small slice a megaphone: the artificial loudness of their voice makes people overestimate their number.”

Getting a grip in the countdown to caucus.

But lacks the religious fervor to connect with 75% of GOP.

Despite historic prejudices, Romney ahead in SC.

Fact check, anyone?