"Thanks for Doing our Bidding, Sucker!"

Inside Politics reports that Massachuestt Governor Mitt Romney's war on contraception and gay rights will only carry him so far in the 2008 Republican Presidential Primary. Sure he's been carrying water for social conservatives for the last year; but, there's one thing keeping him back. He is (soft whisper in your ear) one of those people, you know a Mormon.

Mr. Romney's Mormon religion could be "an obstacle for [social conservatives], who make up a large and vocal segment of Republican primary voters," the Boston Globe noted yesterday. "It would be extraordinarily hard for mainline denomination people in the South to openly and strongly politick or be involved in a Mormon's run for office," Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told the Globe. "Scholars say Protestant evangelicals who form the base of the Republican Party have more profound theological conflicts with the Mormon Church," the paper stated. "A Romney run for president would test the unity of a Christian right voting bloc that for the past five years has demonstrated remarkable solidarity on issues," the paper noted. "In a Romney race for president, where Christian evangelicals see in the Massachusetts governor a like-minded leader on moral questions, some evangelical leaders say the issue may come down to a basic political question: Who's the competition?"