Now that Rick Santorum has dropped out and Newt Gingrich is merely going through the motions, it is all but inevitable that Mitt Romney is going to secure the Republican presidential nomination. As such, Religious Right leaders have seen the handwriting on the wall and begun lining up to support him.
But not everyone is willing to do so, partially because of Romney’s long history of changing his political principles to win office, but also because of his Mormon faith. As Bryan Fischer made clear yesterday, there is a not insignificant percentage of the Religious Right base that simply will not vote for a “spiritually compromised candidate” like Romney
Similarly, Steve Deace is an influential right-wing radio host in Iowa who endorsed Newt Gingrich but is now struggling with the prospect of having to support Romney. And while Deace appears to be willing to at least entertain the idea of voting for Romney out of necessity simply because of the issue of Israel, he is equally willing to give air time to vehement anti-Mormon critics like Tricia Erickson to make the case on his program that being a Mormon in and of itself demonstrates that Romney’s judgement cannot be trusted:
I think that the leader of the free world, especially in the times that we’re in today, we cannot afford a Mormon experiment. We have to have someone at the head of our country with sound judgment. If this man does not have the judgment to be able to discern fact from fiction on the most basic things like the horrifically false religion that he’s in. If he doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand that he has lived a lie all of his life and continues the lie, then how do we trust the judgment of this man to put him at the head of our country with everything that’s going on? I mean, if he cannot even figure out fact from fiction in the way that he’s been raised, how can we trust his judgement at the head of our nation?
