The part of the country Mitt Romney heads to next, his political hopes only recently resurrected, the wounds in his palms from Santorum's nails still fresh, isn't called The Book of Mormon Belt. There is such a place but it lies way out west, in Brigham Young's austere old desert kingdom, where the people are few and the salt flats stretch forever. This more southern realm, though, which obeys another scripture, is wetter, leafier, and richer in delegates. What's more, the pious white millions who call it home (or 'sweet home' when they're drunk and rocking out), and whose good favor Romney now seeks to win, don't much care for his newish, peculiar sect. In Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, and the parts of Ohio that culturally resemble them down to the wrecked Chevy Nova lawn decor and the graphic, fetal Choose Life billboards, Romney's religion is a weird, masked heresy, a coat-and-tie version of Devil Worship. When his campaign busses come around that mountain they might not face assault by dogs and water cannons, but they won't meet with many hallelujahs, either.
The folks there will hang those Mormon horns on Mitt. Their bonfires have already been lit. First with the match was Rick Perry's preacher friend, who labeled Mormonism a cult. Then, days go, came the Rev. Franklin Graham who, in the midst of reheating the burning question of whether Obama hails from Planet Christ or another theological galaxy, also made sure to observe that Romney's church is not, in the minds of most Christians, all that Christian. The doctrinal details behind these charges tend to swap around or go unspecified, but they seem to boil down to this: while Mormons claim to worship Jesus, they don't handle poisonous snakes while doing so, casting doubt upon their credibility. They also attend closed temples, wear strange under things, and teach that Lucifer was the Lord's brother rather than just some cosmic traveling salesman who arrived in Eden from parts unknown.
