You are correct, and what you say represents my views also as a Missouri Synod pastor.
My guess, and it is only a guess because I don't know the answer, is that a Missouri Synod conservative pastor who believes the Pope is the Antichrist may get a few strange looks from some of his more moderate colleagues but will be acknowledged by them as someone who holds to traditional Lutheran doctrine, but a person who denies that won't get in too much trouble in most parts of the Missouri Synod.
On the other hand, it looks like Michele Bachmann’s statements that she loves Catholics and denying what her church clearly teaches about the Pope being the Antichrist might have gotten her into a great deal of trouble if she were a ordained Wisconsin Synod minister — which, of course, could never happen in either the LCMS or WELS because she is female.
Maybe I should be glad that most people I deal with roll their eyes when I say I'm a Calvinist who believes in baptizing babies; after I say things like that, we never get around to issues like whether “the mass teaches that the living and the dead have not the forgiveness of sins through the sufferings of Christ unless Christ is still daily offered for them by the priests; and that Christ is bodily present under the form of bread and wine and is therefore to be worshiped in them. And thus the mass, at bottom, is nothing else than a denial of the one sacrifice and passion of Jesus Christ, and an accursed idolatry” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 80).
I quote that to make clear that the Wisconsin Synod's “anti-Catholic statements” are pretty typical of Protestant doctrinal statements in the time of the Reformation.
I expect Catholics to affirm the Council of Trent. I expect Pentecostals to speak in tongues. I expect Baptists to require believers’ baptism for church membership. I expect Orthodox Jews to keep kosher. I expect Calvinists to believe in predestination. But just as with Lutheran doctrine on this issue of the Pope being the Antichrist, none of those issues make much difference in how I vote in political races.
On the contrary, I have a lot of problems with the integrity of someone who claims to be a member of a church and denies its teaching. For people on Free Republic who emphasize original intent of the Constitution, I think it should be obvious that those of us who are members of confessional churches need to follow the confessions of our churches or have enough integrity to resign our memberships and get out — which Bachmann seems to have done, by the way.
Even if have a problem with what somebody’s church teaches, I expect the church members to follow church teachings or get out. I have no respect for people who stay inside a church, attack its confessions, and swear before God that they believe things which they in fact do not believe. On the other hand, I have no problem with someone running for political office who says, “I affirm the teachings of my church because I believe it's what the Bible says, and here are my reasons why, but I'm running for public office and I don't think swearing to uphold the Constitution has anything to do with my doctrinal views on that point.”
That, I believe, is where the focus needs to remain.