Romney to give Mormon speech - AP
DES MOINES, Iowa - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, striving to be the country's first Mormon president, will give a speech this week explaining his relatively unknown faith to voters, his campaign said Sunday...
The decision...comes as the former Massachusetts governor's bid is threatened in Iowa by underdog Mike Huckabee. The ex-governor of Arkansas and one-time Southern Baptist minister has rallied influential Christian conservatives to erase Romney's monthslong lead and turn the race into a dead-heat...
From the start of Romney's bid, his Mormon faith has been an issue in the campaign as he tried to position himself as the candidate of the GOP's family values voters. A Pew Research Center poll in September found a quarter of all Republicans — including 36 percent of white evangelical Protestants — said they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon.
Last week, Huckabee sought to exploit Romney's weaknesses — his Mormon faith and his reversal on abortion as well as shifts on other issues — by running a TV ad in Iowa that emphasizes his own religious beliefs. The ad doesn't mention Romney but clearly targets him.
"Faith doesn't just influence me. It really defines me. I don't have to wake up every day wondering what do I need to believe," Huckabee says in TV ad. "Let us never sacrifice our principles for anybody's politics. Not now, not ever."
But Huckabee, in an interview on ABC's "This Week," took a pass when asked if Mormonism contradicts the central teachings of Christianity...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071202/ap_on_el_pr/romney_mormonMy view: Romney has little chance of winning the GOP nomination - unless its because all the other candidates are bad. And he has no chance in the general election because the fundies won't do their part, not for a mormon.
I love Huckabee's statement: "I don't have to wake up every day wondering what do I need to believe. Let us never sacrifice our principles for anybody's politics. Not now, not ever."
We need more of that on our side. That's the winning formula.