[MikeWaters]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...eiJQ_blog.html

Mitt Romney, as everyone knows, is a lifelong Mormon and this has clearly cost him votes. In Saturday’s South Carolina primary, exit polls show that religion played a major role in elevating Gingrich to the win and breaking the Republican race wide open. Though, as the Post polling team points out, Romney doubled his share of the evangelical vote from 2008, nearly three-quarters of Gingrich’s support in South Carolina came from evangelicals; just over half of Romney’s did. It will be interesting to see whether Romney also has religion problems in Florida, which is not as heavily evangelical as South Carolina.
It seems the Rev. Brad Atkins, president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, was right when he said: “In South Carolina, Romney’s Mormonism will be more of a cause of concern than Gingrich’s infidelity.”
Gingrich supporter Judy Manning of Marietta said of Romney, “I’m afraid of his Mormon faith. It’s better than the Muslims. Of course, every time you look on TV these days you find an ad … telling us how normal they are. So why do they have to put ads on TV just to convince us that they’re normal if they’re normal?” Manning is also concerned about polygamy “that doesn’t follow the Christian faith.” (Polygamy has been outlawed in this country and is banned by the Mormon church.)