Mitt Romney seeks to placate crabby religous base

Liberty University's mascot: I think it's
a giant, homophobic eagle. So, Mitt Romney gave his Liberty University speech last Saturday. It seems to be primarily noteworthy for being gawdawful boring, which is probably exactly what they were going for'although apparently there was a nice applause line when he clarified that yes, he was still against gay marriage. This may mark the longest Mitt Romney has ever held a single belief on the campaign trail, so I imagine that was the reason for at least some of that applause.

This is the line from the speech I've seen picked out most often:

People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview. The best case for this is always the example of Christian men and women working and witnessing to carry God's love into every life - people like the late Chuck Colson.

... because when you think about how to be a good, upstanding Christian, you should be thinking about convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who did nasty things for partisan political gain, got caught, got sent to prison, and then discovered that mentioning Jesus was a fine way to make a generation of religious conservatives consider your own felon-for-your-party path through life as a decent career choice. Be like Chuck!

It also seems to be what the Romney campaign is settling on in order to paper over that whole "I am of a religion that the rest of you religious jackasses loathe as nearly Satanic." What matters, Romney argues, is that while the religions may be different that doesn't mean we can't all work together to oppress other groups we agree we don't like. And hey, we like all the same felons!

This is pretty much the only thing the Romney campaign can do. It's not like evangelicals have much of a choice; it's either Romney or Obama, and they already know they don't like Obama because he's Muslim and/or Marxist and/or Hitler. All he has to do is be dull enough that they don't get actively offended by him, and they'll begrudgingly come to accept their fate. Pat Robertson is already laying that groundwork:

"It looks like the people who were worried about his Mormonism, at least that crowd is diminishing somewhat," Robertson said. "The question is, if you have two candidates, you don't have Jesus running against someone else. You have Obama running against Romney."

I'm sure his audience was grateful for that clarification. The televangelists of America don't need Jesus to run. They just need someone who will agree to hate the same people they do.