Cutting a deal with the devil: The acceptable dissing of Mormons

How Republicans ended up with Shamnesty McCain

More on religion in politics from The American Spectator.

Mike Huckabee stoked the fires of paranoia in a New York Times Magazine story when he asked, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” One-time presidential candidate the Reverend Al Sharpton spoke for many true believers when he said, “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyway.”

Bill Keller, host of the Florida-based Live Prayer TV warned his reported 2.4 million e-mail subscribers that a vote for Romney would mean a vote for — you guess it — Beelzebub. “The presidency is the most powerful position in the world,” Keller told American Spectator contributor Carrie Sheffield. “If Romney was elected president, it would give mainstream credibility and acceptance to the Mormon cult and lead millions of people into that cult.”

Slate magazine contributor Christopher Hitchens demanded that Romney answer for the racist past of his faith. “His church was officially racist until 1965, believing that black people were an inferior species,” Hitchens fumed, while Slate editor Jacob Weisberg said that the religion’s founder Joseph Smith was an obvious con man, and that “Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don’t want him running the country.”

Republicans now have two liberal Baptists to choose from, neither one with a small government bone in his body. Is it possible that evangelical Republicans were so anti-Mormon that they cut a deal with the devil?

What does it say about the principles of the faith-bsed of this nation when  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints  holds the unenviable distinction of being the last acceptable group to defame with impunity?