Somebody Else Sees It Too

Rob forwarded this article on to me and I liked it so much that I just have to share it. Here are some highlights:

Find a fairer way to judge Mitt Romney by Rich Lowry

“For once, the media aren’t so thrilled by a “first.” Usually being the first African-American, woman, Latino or anything else to run for a major office gives a campaign a frisson of excitement in the press. Such pioneering campaigns are said to hold important lessons about the tolerance of the American public.

But former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney represents the first “first” that has elicited a lukewarm reaction from the media. Journalists constantly run stories about whether Romney can become the first Mormon president — with an undercurrent suggesting that they’d be just fine if he can’t.

…A trope in Romney-as-Mormon stories is that evangelical Christians won’t be able to vote for a Mormon. There is a whiff of wishfulness to this, as if reporters hope evangelicals prove as bigoted as reporters have always suspected they were…

…If Romney is the Mormon church’s intended instrument as president, it must be because the church has hatched a sinister plot to bring better management techniques to the federal government and cut wasteful spending, Romney’s rather unthreatening campaign pledges. There is zero evidence of the church having ever “controlled” Sens. Harry Reid, Orrin Hatch or Gordon Smith — all Mormons — let alone Romney while he served four years as governor of Massachusetts…

…Indeed, rather than recoiling at his Mormonism, Republican primary voters may conclude that the handsome, “golly”-exclaiming, (newly) down-the-line conservative is simply too good to be true.That wouldn’t necessarily be a “first,” but it would certainly be a fairer way to judge Romney than on his religious faith.”