IN 2007, a prominent Florida televangelist named Bill Keller condemned Mitt Romney's religion in a "daily devotional'' to his 2.4 million e-mail subscribers.

"If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!'' Keller raged. "There is no excuse, no justification for supporting and voting for a man who will be used by Satan to lead the souls of millions into the eternal flames of hell!''

That was ugly, offensive, and intolerant. So was another diatribe about religion, published by a different Bill Keller last week.

"I honestly don't care if Mitt Romney wears Mormon undergarments beneath his Gap skinny jeans,'' the executive editor of The New York Times wrote in a smug essay for the Sunday magazine, "or if he believes that the stories of...