The American Spectator

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br> Fort Lauderdale, Florida /p>

It is not right to tar everybody with the bigotry of a few. Unfortunately, that is what Mr. Orlet does in his article "No Mormons Need Apply."

I agree in part with Mr. Orlet, there is an anti-Mormon feeling that helped Romney to lose. But it is very important to stress that even he points out that there is not enough information to be able to blame any one cause. But then he goes on to do just that.

Romney had many self-imposed hurdles to overcome. He had been a Liberal. From Massachusetts. And since when did the South give their votes to Yankees. (No offense intended, but in the South, if you hale from north of the Mason-Dixon line you are a Yankee.) Romney claimed he converted to conservatism. He did so just before his run for President, how convenient. Every leading contender on the Republican side flip-flopped, but Romney let himself get identified as such. After he converted, as governor, he had stood up for human life and traditional marriage in liberal Massachusetts, and did so in the face of withering attacks. But he couldn't get the message across that his conversion had been tested and he stayed true. Most of the time, he was too reserved to really connect with middle or lower class voters. If he had run with the same enthusiasm for our causes that he had while withdrawing at CPAC, the story would have been different. And since when has a self-financed millionaire ever really had a good chance to win our nomination?

Besides, there is nothing wrong with voting for someone because you identify with them, whether the identity is regional, military, religious or whatever. How in the world do we distinguish whether a vote for one person was really for him and not against another? In some places Romney won over the Giuliani and Thompson supporters and in some places he didn't. Many Romney supporters are now voting Huckabee. The major problem on the Republican side was breaking out of the small group appeal into broad based appeal and Romney and McCain were the only two who did so, but neither did it well. Romney had won quite a few states and a significant proportion of the total vote before he pulled out. Romney needed to win Florida to have a good chance of breaking the winner take all advantage McCain inherited from Giuliani in the New York area. But close doesn't count.

See the truth is, even with all those handicaps, Romney had a real chance to win the nomination. A blatant anti-Mormon appeal to evangelicals knocked him off his stride in Iowa, but he recovered. The press only focused on the states he lost, not the states he won, but he kept winning more states. Anti-Mormonism was part of his being uncompetitive in the South, but he didn't lose it there, he lost it in Florida where the contest was close.

As a Mormon, I spent a lot of time looking to see if there were a better candidate than Romney. I liked Giuliani's fiscal, but not his social policies. Thompson was mostly conservative, but between blocking anti-tort legislation, supporting McCain-Feingold, hiding the fact he had conveniently converted to pro-life prior to his Senate run, missing the swell of interest, and giving the air of not really wanting the job, he lost me with many others. McCain had spent the past decade stabbing conservatives and Republicans in the back, thwarting half our legislation, and turning the rest more liberal. And Huckabee was pro-life, but he sold himself and his record as liberal in Iowa, and as conservative in S. Carolina, and like McCain, viciously attacked anyone who criticized him. After deliberately appealing to the anti-Mormons, Huckabee went on to attack everyone else as anti-Christian, all before anyone had voted.

Even after deciding he was the best out of a sorry lot of conservatives, I still hesitated before deciding to support him. You can't blame anti-Mormons for Romney's loss when even some Mormons are wishy-washy about supporting him. I think Reagan would have won Utah in a two man race against Romney. And if Romney spends the next few years in valiant and articulate support of conservative causes, should he choose to run again, he might even win the South, despite the anti-Mormon presence.

Let those who are proud of their anti-Mormon stance, stand up and claim credit. But give everyone else the benefit of the doubt before you label them as bigots. After all, if there is anyone who is at fault for Romney losing, it is Romney himself.

By the way. I grew up Presbyterian, but since converting to the LDS church in Ohio, I have lived in Texas, Alaska, Michigan, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and now I am back in Tennessee. I have seen anti-Mormonism out there, some in private, some that is organized by evangelicals, and some that is on TV, but most of it seems to be driven by ex-Mormons, and frankly there is not enough out there to blame for Romney's loss. Most people aren't interested enough to care one way or the other. And those who know Mormons tend to think well of them as mostly good people. It is pretty hard to think of that nice friendly family down the street or at work as part of some demonic cult. If lots of other people still have negative impressions, it usually has more to do with mostly knowing Mormons for their polygamous past. Some day we will eventually get it well known that it stopped long ago, but then there is a different type of anti-Mormon who thinks the Mormon Church has fallen into sin by stopping polygamy, and those people still practice it today.

p>I personally prefer to care about the anti-Mormon stuff only enough to overcome the false images they spread. But I have to stand up in defense of non Mormons when they are being tarred as anti-Mormon bigots. If a Reagan-like Mormon ran and lost that would be a different story, but for now, give everybody the benefit of the doubt. br> -- James Bailey /p>

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