Mitt may never have had much reason to truly care about issues of social morality that most religions of the civilized world care about, at least on paper (even the LDS cares about it on paper — but they are toothless it seems when it comes to reining Mitt in). He does seem to have carried on decently enough in his own love life. One wife, Ann Romney, whom he still loves, and even though his sons may be fairly criticized for shying away from military service they are not noted as being crooks or libertines.
We truly can’t know from the evidence at hand. Mitt is a sinner badly in need of salvation. However Mitt does appear open to being influenced in a way that Barack never would be. A waffler may waffle in the right direction. A demonic doctrinaire, never.
A larger issue for the future is how can the less-liberal body politic be unfrozen from its apathy with respect to primaries. People complain about elections never offering good choices; well that’s mostly because they only think general elections. The same complainers will by a proportion of 9-1 not get off their duffs in a primary. Mitt became prominent in the lack of competition from Sarah Palin. When Sarah Palin did not run, the body politic said meh. And We Got Mitt. Better strategeries (pace GWB) are needed.
Well stated, and I agree.