In the effort to board fringe Republican groups onto the Romney 2012 yacht, no group represented a bigger challenge than evangelicals. But both polls and endorsements show that Christian voters have no problem choosing Romney over admitted Muslim Barack Obama.
Evangelicals were one of the prime causes of Romney's dispiriting primary, depriving him of an opening win in Iowa, costing him the South Carolina primary just as he was gaining speed (in preference for Newt Gingrich, of all people), and then catapulting Rick Santorum to a prominence far beyond that which his positions warranted.
The problem: Romney's is Mormon, and in the complicated, internecine calculations of mainstream American Christianity, Mormons don't count. This has cost him needed endorsements on the right, of the type that aided even fundamentalist-bashing John McCain in 2008. "To those of us who are evangelicals," Robert Jeffress, a Reverend at the First Baptist Church of Dallas,told Hardball last fall, "when all other things are equal, we prefer competent Christians to competent non-Christians, who may be good, moral people, like Mitt Romney."
Not no more: Jeffress endorsed Romney Wednesday morning, "despite" his Mormon faith. Via the Associated Press:
The pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, tells The Associated Press that he still doesn't believe Mormons are Christians.
But Jeffress says voters will have to choose between a Christian like President Barack Obama and a Mormon like Romney. He says the difference is that Obama embraces non-biblical principles while Romney embraces biblical principles like the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage.
So nyah. Evangelical voters feels the same: according to a Roanoke College Poll, evangelicals are already backing Romney at a 2-1 margin, with only 13% telling pollsters Romney's faith is a problem.
But before Romney does his Mormon underwear celebration dance, he should look further down the poll: he only has a 39% approval rating with evangelicals, despite their support of him over Obama.
That's the money number: Obama's campaign isn't counting on evangelical support, and doesn't need the voting bloc to win in November. Democrats long ago ceded hardcore religious voters to the right, one of the main reasons they lost in 2000 and especially in 2004. However, the religious right felt taken advantage of by Bush in 2004, and stayed home for the 2006 and 2008 elections. In other words, evangelical voters matter only when they vote. If they're not enthusiastic over Mitt Romney, their support may be entirely theoretical.
This is a big problem as Mitt Romney attempts to pivot to the center. He wants to stay far away from cultural issues and remain focused on the economy. But to get evngelicals to the polls, he'll have to hit hot-button issues like abortion, Planned Parenthood, and the like, all of which will cost him with the swing voters he needs to woo. Romney still has a fourteen point gap with women voters in swing states, a far more worrisome number than any trouble he ever had with evangelicals; appealing to the religious camps of the Republican party could cement that gulf with the more important voting bloc.
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