Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's I-have-a-religion-and-it's-OK-if-it's-different speech went down well with several leading Republican bloggers Thursday.
The only problem, some online commentaries note, is that the 20-minute address may not address the concerns of the evangelical Christian constituency whose support Romney needs.
"If you are appealing to religious people, especially fundamentalists, on the basis of faith, you cannot logically then ask them to ignore the content of the faith," wrote political commentator and essayist Andrew Sullivan on The Atlantic magazine's Daily Dish blog.
Former Massachusetts governor Romney delivered his much-anticipated speech on the role of religious faith in the United States Thursday in College Station, Texas. Pundits believe the speech was meant to address the concerns of evangelical Christian voters in Iowa, many of whom have thrown their support behind rival Republican candidate Mike Huckabee. Former Arkansas governor Huckabee is a Baptist minister.
"I believe the speech will be a net positive for Romney and his campaign," wrote Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters. "Will this suffice to reduce anti-Mormon sentiment? Probably not, although I'm certain that it's been wildly overstated," he hedged.
Steven Taylor, a political science professor at Troy University in Troy, Alabama, was more direct.
"The more I read about, and think about, Romney and the way his has approached his religious views, the more it reinforces Romney's biggest weakness: the assumption that he is not especially forthright about his views and that he seeks to shade (if not totally change) his views to make himself more palatable to vote(r)s (again, think his 'conversions' on abortion and gay rights)," he wrote on PoliBlog.
Both Taylor and Morrissey cut through Romney's augustly delivered spin to address the heart of the issue: The candidate flatly declined to address the specific doctrinal differences between Mormons and evangelical Christians. But those differences in beliefs are what the crucial Iowa voting bloc is concerned with, the bloggers note.
Still, at least one self-described moderate evangelical Christian blogger was impressed by Romney's performance.
"Mitt Romney today stood up in front of the nation and talked about God and talked about religion in exactly and precisely the way presidents of this great nation have throughout history," wrote John Schroeder, co-author of the Article VI blog. "He has 'cut himself out from the herd' as they would say here in Texas."
