I contend that the story of Mitt Romney's speech was as much about Mike Huckabee as it was about Romney himself.
The surface-level purpose of Romney's speech was, of course, Kennedyesque. He endeavored to reassure the American people that, if nominated and elected to the presidency, he would not be a mouthpiece for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Romney also took the obvious opportunity to remind Americans of the historic importance and contemporary value of our religious diversity. The speech succeeded on both counts.
The deeper question, however, is why Romney made this speech when he did. Earlier in the campaign, he seemed almost insistent on not making such a speech. Clearly he wishes to be judged on his merits, not on the basis of the specific religious tradition to which he belongs -- and rightly so. Yet he did speak on December 6, and in my view he did so primarily as a politician rather than as an American, a Mormon, or even a person of faith per se.
Today's campaigns have access to nearly inconceivable amounts of information about voters. Candidates and their staffs are able to track the attitudes, preferences, and even passing whims of key constituencies in great detail. Romney's campaign knows, perhaps better than anyone else involved in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, that Mike Huckabee's candidacy is red hot right now. This news is very ominous indeed for Romney, who has campaigned in Iowa as a social conservative for more than a year. Since Huckabee (a former Southern Baptist minister with gold-standard credentials on social and moral issues) is gaining ground in Iowa, we must assume that he is doing a good job attracting the support of "values voters."
Elections are won and lost at the margins, and in a crowded Republican field with no clear frontrunner, Romney cannot afford to cede any ground to Huckabee, especially among the very voters both candidates are targeting specifically.
Therefore, I contend that Romney chose to address religion when he did primarily to reach out to values voters in Iowa who have the capability to swing his electoral fortunes on their own. Clearly he wished to remind these voters that he, too, speaks for them; he, too, is a person of deep faith who espouses traditional values and conservative stances on their bread-and-butter issues. Do not let it go unnoticed that Romney professed his "love [for] the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals ... [and] the confident independence of the Lutherans." Iowa is home to substantial numbers of values voters from all three traditions -- especially Lutherans. Precious few politicians specifically mention Lutherans on the campaign trail. In fact, we rarely hear anything about Lutherans at all, except in Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion." Yet Romney reaches out to Lutherans and other potential values voters in Iowa because they might hold his political future in their hands. To paraphrase: "I am like you in many ways, and I will stand for the things you stand for," he says. "Please notice me now, and vote for me, not Huckabee."
-- Laura Olson is a professor of political science at Clemson University in South Carolina. She is a co-author of RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA: FAITH, CULTURE AND STRATEGIC CHOICES (Westview Press, 2004) and co-editor of CHRISTIAN CLERGY IN AMERICAN POLITICS (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
