There is a massive difference between a house seat and state wide office.
with the proper gerrymandering anyone can be elected to the house.
It's Oklahoma, the state is about 80% conservative Republican so the only gerrymandering they'd be doing is if they wanted to create a liberal Democrat district. Istook's beliefs were well in line with the "average" Oklaholma voter.
They certainly couldn't "gerrymander" it favor Mormons, since Mormons are about 1% of the population in OK. I'd be shocked if they were able to create a district that was over 5% Mormon. Istook won his elections overwhelmingly, which means that southern "bible beliving Christians" in the bible belt overwhelmingly voted for Istook, whether you like it or not.
I suppose I could bring up Paula Hawkins, who is definitely a Mormon and won statewide office in the south (She was U.S. Senator from Florida for 6 years), but no doubt you'll have some excuse like "Florida doesn't count as the south"
The fact is, non-Christians have won handily in the bible belt before, and they will again. Maybe you wouldn't, but plenty of folks would rather vote for a conservative Jew who doesn't believe in Jesus, than a socialist "Christian" who does. The reason why there haven't been many Mormons elected to office in the south is the same reason there aren't many Mormons elected to office up north in the great lakes area: we don't have many. When they're less than 1% of the population, there's not going to be many running for statewide positions.
The reason why Romney is having problems in the south is his liberal record, not his religion. When you keep yapping about his religious afflilation, you just give the mainstream media excuses to claim that GOP "bigotry" caused Romney to do poorly instead of the fact he's a RINO that conservatives don't trust.
If anything, the only religious problem Romney has is that he's not Mormon ENOUGH. Most Mormons are staunch social conservatives and find common ground with conservative Catholics and protestants on culture issues like abortion. Romney's an exception to the rule. IF a conservative Mormon like Jason Chaffetz was running, he'd win handily in the bible belt just like Istook did. Maybe you wouldn't vote for him, but I'd venture to say you'd be in the minority because I know most southern conservatives happily backed the guy over Chris Cannon.
LOL what a silly post. Sorry but I guess the good people of Istook’s district care more about policy than his religion.