Sometime today, Willard Mitt Romney will unveil what has been one of the worst-kept secrets in American politics as he formally announces his bid for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.
Ever since he was bounced in the 2008 Republican primaries, the former governor of Massachusetts has been laying out his battle plan for another run, locking up dump trucks of campaign cash while projecting his walk-the-tightrope conservatism through a book and the occasional Sunday talk show appearance. With a field of candidates that resembles more of a carnival than a political contest, Romney appears like someone less prone to getting his head stuck in the cotton candy machine. His business bona fides, which have led companies, capital ventures and even Olympic Games out of stormy waters into financial prosperity, along with an unwillingness to pander to the herd of conspiracy-thirsty "I-want-my-country-that-was-never-really-taken-from-me-back" teabagger bloodsuckers, make him a potential nightmare for the Obama administration, especially given the current economic climate.
But all these things could be quickly undercut by one irrelevant factor - the "M" word.
For some conservatives, it won't matter if Romney balances the American budget with Monopoly money, beats back the Taliban once and for all with the corpse of Osama bin Laden and convinces the ghost of Ronald Reagan to run as his VP in the next 18 months because he doesn't believe in their Chevy-truck-driving, tax-paying, meat-eating Chuck Norris version of Jesus.
Never mind the fact that Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has insisted that no authorities in his church "will ever exert influence on presidential decisions," Bible-thumpers will quickly throw him aside in favor of a less qualified candidate because his faith may have a longer book list than other Christian denominations.
If the Republican Party ever wants to move beyond its image as the shepherd of those whose intellectual capacities came with an extra chromosome, this kind of religious intolerance and bigotry - yes, it is bigotry - needs to stop.
Make no mistake, we have our issues with a candidate who has the political conviction of a flapjack. However, we do not believe, as Jack Kennedy put it during his bid for the White House in 1960, that any candidate was forever denied the keys to the White House on the day he or she was baptized.
We find it ironic that many of these good Christian soldiers, who cling to every letter and comma of the U.S. Constitution, somehow manage to look over that one "technicality" in Article 6 that states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Leave it to God's fearmongers, the very ones who see any federal expenditure as equivalent to defecating on the graves of the Founding Fathers and using the Constitution as tissue, to sidestep the provisions that undercut their vision of "Jesusland. "
But because Darwin's hammer swings slowly, these people will have the same say, possibly even more so, in who becomes the GOP nominee.
But it could always be worse. Go to Google and punch in "Rick Santorum" and click the very first thing that comes up. (Hint: it's not a former congressman kissing babies.)
God help us all.
