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Maybe I missed something, but I don't think Mitt Romney has made his position within the LDS church part of his campaign.

What? You don't think underneath his "Faith in America" Mormon speech in early December was this carefully hidden platform of his with the title "LDS bishop" and "LDS stake president" written on it? His less than 3 yo new position on abortion just happens to match the LDS position on abortion--the one he administered when he was a bishop.

Romney's "identity" politics is in some ways carrying him much further than Huck.

This is occurring on many different levels.

It’s happening at the vote level: Huckabee got 34% of the vote in a 60% Evangelical turnout in Iowa. Almost 1 in 5 Evangelical Iowans voted for Romney...Can you imagine Romney only getting 34% in Utah? The 8-10% of Nevada LDS voters, who made up a quarter of the Nevada GOP, went 94% for Romney. (The LDS voters helped him to carry Wyoming).

(Could you imagine how crazy the MSM & FReepers would go if 94% of Evangelicals supported an Evangelical candidate in any given state? But with Willard, another free pass)

It’s happening at the financial level: According to the Deseret News, 79% of the candidate $ raised in Utah is going Romney (which I figured was about 91% of the GOP candidate $ from Utah going to Romney).

(Could you imagine how crazy the MSM & FReepers would go if the most Evangelical state in the union had 91% of GOP $ to an Evangelical candidate? But with Willard, another free pass)

It’s happening at the core identificational level: Romney’s father’s cousin, Marion G. Romney, was one of the top three general authorities in the church in the 60s. Six generations ago, Romney’s ancestor was an “apostle”—as was his brother. In fact, this apostle converted a person who eventually became an LDS “prophet” of the church.

If he is, he's a fool. American Mormons are significantly outnumbered by Americans who mistrust Mormons. Romney's not going to win the nomination by carrying Utah and Nevada.

Romney stands to gain little by playing up his Mormon identity, while Huckabee stands to gain a great deal by running on his Evangelical identity. At the very lowest estimate, self-described Evangelical Protestants outnumber Mormons in the United States by ratio of ten to one. At the highest, the ratio is eighteen to one. That means Huckabee's third of Evangelicals represents three to six times the number of votes Romney's near 100% of Mormons does.

I think the purpose of Romney's speech last month was to make himself palatable to Evangelical Protestants and Catholics who were predisposed to distrusting Mormons. It wasn't to gain an advantage; it was to counter the serious disadvantage he faces by virtue of his adherence to a religion with a very spotty reputation in this country.