Value Voters Against Romney

An arch-conservative Texas preacher rails against Mormon Mitt Romney. Romney takes it in stride, but hardliners could endanger his candidacy.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth isn’t Mitt Romney’s thing. The poll-leading Republican candidate reacted almost serenely when the pastor of a Texas mega-church trained his big guns on him.

At the arch-conservative Value Voters conference last weekend, Pastor Robert Jeffress called Romney’s Mormon faith a “cult” and claimed Romney himself wasn’t a Christian. Instead of firing back in defense, Romney chose to call for decency and civility.

Romney knows all too well how much political power is wielded by devout hardliners. In the face of years of economic turbulence and the job market crisis, nothing shakes their radical beliefs:They remain pious and oppose abortion as well as homosexuality. They have a problem with other religions, particularly Islam. Small wonder that at this convention, Jeffress chose to support Texan Rick Perry saying, “Rick Perry is a proven leader, he is a true conservative and he is a genuine follower of Christ.”

Europeans might call him a religious fanatic, but in the United States he’s a political factor to be taken seriously. During the last Republican primaries, 44 percent of voters were evangelicals. No sooner had Romney thrown his hat into the ring than the piously religious began taking potshots at his religious beliefs — a hurdle that may again be his downfall.

Despite his lead in the polls, the millionaire entrepreneur who runs on his business acumen gets beaten up by arch-conservatives. Only four percent of those attending the conference expressed support for him — far behind Libertarian candidate Ron Paul who favors minimalist government, black pizza entrepreneur Herman Cain and even behind Rick Santorum, who is otherwise a non-factor in the race.

Nearly half the white evangelical respondents to a recent CBS opinion poll said they would not vote for a Mormon. Tony Perkins, co-organizer of the Value Voters conference said, “There are theological differences between Mormonism and Christianity. Evangelicals do not see Mormonism as Christianity.” He went on to say that that had been a fact for many years and was unlikely to change in just one election cycle. And the primaries begin in three months.

But Romney’s faith isn’t the only thing the far right finds objectionable. He had previously been in favor of abortion rights, something National Public Radio’s Don Gonyea says the far right still holds against him, despite his about face on the issue. It wasn’t until he publicly declared his opposition to abortion at the Value Voters conference that he was applauded for his conversion, although he had otherwise been warmly received.

Should he fail to become the Republican nominee, President Obama might benefit, provided there is no clear preference in the meantime. If he succeeds, even Romney the Mormon might get the support of the hard right, considering their hatred for Obama. “I can’t say that he energized me, but he’s got a lot of experience,” said 63-year-old Karen Rose of Ashtabula, Ohio. “And so, you know, you have to think about what’s going to appeal to a broad part of our country. Anybody is better than Obama.”