Mitt Romney should send Texas pastor Robert Jeffress a gift. It could be a fruit basket, or an e-card, or a bottle of nonalcoholic scotch. Really, whatever Romney thinks is appropriate. If the Great Mormon Debate of 2011 had to happen—and it did—the candidate couldn’t ask for a better instigator than a guy with the gravitas of a jug band soloist and the tact of a Laugh Factory heckler.
I watched it happen and almost knew how it would end. Before Rick Perry’s big Friday speech to the Values Voter Summit, a Jeffress accomplice scuttled around the press seats, passing out his remarks, in which the pastor fromFirst Baptist Dallas would plead for the nomination of “a genuine follower of Jesus Christ.” After Romney spoke (a fine speech, not
that anyone remembers it), Jeffress hung around offstage, available to roving mobs of reporters. He called Romney “a member of a
cult” and said “the idea that Mormonism is a cult is not some fringe conservative idea.” The pastor hung out for hours, taking cell phone
calls, doing live TV hits, repeating the word “cult” a few times every minute.
Jeffress used his moment to create a substance heretofore unknown to nature: sympathy for Mitt Romney. The pastor was condemned almost immediately by people as diverse as James Fallows (“anti-Mormonism is bigotry”) and Bill Bennett (“do not give voice to bigotry”). In hissummit speech, right after warning of “a race war declared by the New Black Panther Party,” Glenn Beck summoned his famous tears and said, “I am a proud member of the Church of Jesus Christ”—aka, a Mormon. The Romney religious question has been brought into the race as a vaudeville routine, with a cartoon villain that everyone can agree to hate. It’s the best the candidate could have hoped for. Any other way, this issue is a loser for him.
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