In the speech before a friendly crowd, and after a warm introduction from former president George Herbert Walker Bush, Romney attempted to offer up a blunt and clear message to voters who might be apprehensive about his Mormonism: he does not take marching orders from the Mormon church, nor does he answer to anyone in the Mormon faith except himself and his God.

“I am an American, running for President,” Romney said.  “A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith.”  Romney went on the stress his belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior.

The address was much analyzed and the parallels to Kennedy’s speech in 1960 were much discussed throughout the news day, including shot-by-shot footage comparisons of each phrase and each statement.  A few evangelical Christian leaders said that Romney had put the issue mostly to rest and gave him a good score.

And much of the mainstream press agreed.  U.S. News & World Report scored the speech a 10, saying Romney “impressed even some of his detractors with a message that…avoided details about his Mormon faith but eloquently laid out his views on religion and liberty.”  Some predicted that on the strength of this Kennedyesque speech, Romney might regain some of the ground lost recently to Huckabee. 
    
But others were concerned, for Romney went further than Kennedy.  Where Kennedy attempted—successfully, most historians agree—to diffuse and de-emphasize religion as an issue, Romney seemed to be suggesting that religion has an important role in governance.  Perhaps because Romney felt pushed by the swell of support flowing toward Huckabee the Christian conservative, Romney offered a view in which there was far less separation between church and state, and a world in which his personal faith would play a more central role in presidential decision-making.

A few opinion makers suggested bluntly that this went too far, and said that Romney—trailing in polls for the first time since mid-Spring—was simply pandering to the religious Right in a direct and brazen response to Huckabee’s rise, which some critics saw as typical of Romney’s “fluidity” on issues.

On NBC News, still other concerns came up: by not embracing the older, classical liberal American tradition of separation of church and state, was Romney now flirting openly with danger, inviting still deeper questions about his own personal religious prism, a lens through which presidential decisions might be made?

In his own Thursday interviews, Huckabee remained politely vague, saying mostly that religion should not be an issue when a voter is faced with a decision. Headline News commentator Glenn Beck, himself a convert to Mormonism, said the arguments about religion are silly and even a bit un-American.  Questions of faith, he said, have no place in the political process, but had become central to the current theater only because of amplified, overwrought media attention.  Few people raised questions about Joseph Lieberman’s Jewish faith in the elections of 2000 or 2004, and even fewer people made religion an issue in 1968 when Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, also a Mormon, made his own bid for the presidency.

So the question began to circulate more freely and openly: has religion become too much of an issue?  Has Huckabee’s ascension and Romney’s decline been primarily—or even in part—the result of Republican voters finding more comfort with a former Baptist preacher than they might find with a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?

And what part should a candidate’s particular religion or denomination play in the public debate anyway?

Still other analysts sensed a growing factional split within the GOP.  Huckabee was clearly attracting social conservatives, the very Republicans who had been adrift for so long and who had withheld enthusiasm for the other candidates.  Giuliani was attracting those Republicans who felt that terrorists, secure borders and a stronger America abroad were the central issues.  Romney was attracting the mostly fiscal conservatives—those who hungered for a proven and effective manager for the nation and its growing economic fears.  Fred Thompson was appealing to those who sought the retail brand most closely resembling Ronald Reagan—clear phrases, easy-to-digest bullet points, a no nonsense agenda, and a mix of grace and style and toughness that could appeal across party lines.

Failing to find any one candidate who could be all of these things—fiscal conservative, social conservative, market manager, fatherly icon—Republicans were settling for pieces and fragments of the whole, an unsatisfying process which some feared would lead to discord at the convention, and the possibility of outright disunity in the general election.

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani continued to draw scrutiny for some of his expenses as mayor.  Of particular interest:  the cost of travel by the mayor and his entourage of security to the Hamptons, expenses which were apparently scattered out among a variety of obscure city agencies and bureaus.  And though the mayor continued to deny wrongdoing, the central allegation was that at least a few of these trips were liaisons between himself and his girlfriend at the time, Judith Nathan (now his wife).

On December 10, Newsweek ran a story analyzing Giuliani’s business relationship with the government of Qatar, which had contracted Giuliani’s security firm—Giuliani Partners—to advise and consult the oil-rich Arab nation about terrorism and security matters, an unprecedented partnership between a presidential candidate and a foreign government.  Giuliani Partners (and its subsidiary, Giuliani Security), founded in 2002 after he was no longer New York mayor, has earned Giuliani millions of dollars from contracts, consulting activity and security analysis.  The Mayor said that these business dealings have been totally legal and ethical, and in the fight against terror have in fact made Qatar and other clients demonstrably safer places, but some reporters and political analysts argue that such high dollar relationships with foreign governments represent more than the mere appearance of impropriety.    

Tuesday, December 11, 2007: New national polls show that despite the tight three way race between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa, and the possibility that the race may also tighten along similar lines in New Hampshire, Clinton still fares far better among Democrats in the rest of the country.  An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Clinton as the first choice of 53% of Democrats, with Obama running a distant second place with 25% and Edwards even further back with a scant 10%.  Biden, Dodd, Richardson and Kuchinik all find themselves stuck in single digits, low single digits.

But the numbers changed when specific Democrats were pitted against specific Republicans.  In these theoretical match-ups, McCain actually fared best against the Democrats, beating Hillary Clinton by 1% or 2%, though the same surveys show McCain losing to Edwards by 12%.  So why is Edwards trailing among Democrats as their first choice?  And why were these numbers so different when taken outside of the early caucus and primary states?

For some analysts, it was about brand identity.  The people of Iowa and New Hampshire have been saturated with 18 to 24 months of continuous campaigning, up close and personal, and have formed their opinions based on close contact and daily combat.  For Americans elsewhere, more generalized opinions have to be formed—in some cases, based largely on name recognition and less on the intense daily scrutiny of the chattering media.

Meanwhile: for True Believer Conservatives, the most respected and intellectually important of all magazines—The National Review—endorsed Mitt Romney on its cover.  For Romney to receive the blessing of this bi-weekly journal founded in the 1950s by conservative columnist and intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr. and home to the Right’s most significant post-War thinkers and opinion makers (George Will, Irving Kristol, Jeffrey Hart, James Burnham, to name but a few), was a fact not lost on even the most cynical of the electronic buzz-makers of the day.  Though National Review’s circulation is small, its influence is powerful among conservatives.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007: It was the No-Fireworks-Don’t-Talk-Out-of-Turn-Raise-Your-Hand Debate, a face-off so rigid and frumpy in format that it defied any comparison with any other political event since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy first engaged on the TV stage in 1960.

In a weird match-up sponsored by The Des Moines Register and Iowa Public Television and aired live on CNN, the Republican hopefuls faced off again for Iowans and the rest of the country—the last formal debate between GOP candidates before the Iowa caucuses in January.

The event was widely analyzed throughout the afternoon and late into the night on CNN, Fox News and CNBC, and a rare bipartisan consensus immediately formed among the media elites as well as practically every journalist who watched it—the bizarre and arbitrary format stiffened the answers, stifled open discussion, crushed dissent and eliminated any chance of real comparison between the candidates.

Some observers described it as boring; others as pointless.  More than a few commentators felt that the debate was a waste of time for those voters who may have tuned in to get a little real information about the candidates.

Worse still—the same debate format was expected for the Democrats the very next day (more on that later).

The debate reached its lowest and most absurd point when the moderator, the Register’s editor, Carolyn Washburn, asked that the candidates raise their hands—yes or no—as to whether they believed global warming was a real phenomenon, and whether human activity was in part responsible for the warmer planet.  It was a moment of high-minded pretension turned instantly sour for its grade school, sound bite approach to a technologically vast and economically complex global problem.  Even some liberals and environmental observers were embarrassed by the awkward spectacle.

Fred Thompson finally set in motion something of a modest rebellion when he said flatly he would not do hand raised responses in the debate.  This drew applause from some of the other candidates, and eventually the audience itself.  Seeing their opportunity to break free of the stilted format, the other candidates also demurred when it came to raising their hands. When Thompson offered to give a one-minute summary of his position on climate change, moderator Washburn refused, insisting that the issue was of the yes-or-no stripe.

Even a few liberal observers commented on the strange rudeness of Washburn, who squelched the momentum of the candidates’ remarks, injected things into responses, and in a few notable cases even answered for them when the answer did not suit her desire for bullet-point response and sound-bite quickness.

Along with the general belief by the day’s opinion makers that the debate seemed purposely designed to put the brakes on open discussion, there was still the issue of what voters thought about the candidates.  Daily polling by several groups produced more of the same: Huckabee still in the lead (and possibly gaining another point or two) with Romney in second place.  And though Giuliani was still leading the composite national polls among Republicans, his third place spot in Iowa was growing more distant by the day.  Even in New Hampshire, Giuliani was starting to slip.

Huckabee was gaining in New Hampshire, where southerners rarely perform well.  And while Huckabee’s numbers were still rising in South Carolina, widely considered the next important hurdle after Iowa and New Hampshire, he was also showing significant gains in two other important states—North Carolina and Florida.

 

One of the sideshow issues during the week became the issue of innuendo and whisper.

In an interview with a New York Times reporter, while discussing the place of religion in the public square, Huckabee, while not attacking Romney by name, asked the semi-rhetorical question: aren’t Mormons the ones who believe that Jesus and Satan were in fact brothers?  Within hours of the comment, Huckabee retraced his steps and retracted the remark.  He telephoned Romney in advance (the interview would not be published until the Sunday edition of the New York Times), explained what happened, and apologized directly to the governor.

But the torrent of discussion that followed focused on whether a religious war of words was developing between some of the candidates, and whether Huckabee was purposely trying to hammer a stake into the heart of Romney by implying that something was amiss in his beliefs and those who followed the Mormon faith.

In a parallel incident, Hillary Clinton—along with some staffers—was forced to apologize to Barack Obama for sidebar remarks made to reporters about Obama’s alleged marijuana use when he was a teenager.  The remarks were made by Clinton’s Iowa chairman in the form of a feigned warning: if Obama really did smoke pot as a teen, don’t you think the Republican spin machine will use that as a blunt tool to bludgeon Obama in the general election?  And if Obama admits to smoking pot a few times, don’t you think the GOP handlers will inevitably discover worse baggage later—when it is too late to change direction?

The comments were cautionary advice: choose the unknown, untested quantity of Obama and face the dark wrath of the Republicans, or choose the known, proven quantity of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and expect no more surprises, just a tenacious fighter and a sure winner in November 2008.

But the Obama people were quick to respond with their own whispers: do you really believe the GOP spin-doctors aren’t going attempt to savage Hillary Clinton with their voluminous files from her past, and almost certainly some of the more infamous issues from Bill Clinton’s past?  And what point do we serve by simply ramping up the nasty war of words and Blue vs. Red by nominating the most polarizing figure among the leading candidates?

Obama and his people stake out a piece of high ground which may become increasingly difficult for Clinton to assault: why reward the Clinton’s with another four or eight years in the White House, thus validating a rancorous, partisan political system verging on dynastic war?  A Democratic friend recently put it this way: voters born after 1970 have only had two family names in the White House since they arrived at voting age in 1988, and those names are Bush and Clinton.  Further, the names Bush, Dole and Clinton have been present in every presidential election cycle since 1976.  To the Obama people this fact speaks volumes about a political process mired in the ruts of bitterness and stagnation, and certainly goes a long way toward explaining why “politics as usual” leads many voters into frustration and social apathy.

Indeed, Obama’s top strategists—David Axelrod and David Plouffe—are counting on voters to grow weary of the Bush versus Clinton national pathology in the early primaries and caucuses.

Team Clinton seeks to position the New York Senator as a quasi-incumbent, someone who has already been tested by fire and battlefield experience.  Obama, they insist, is naïve and foolish to think that high-minded rhetoric and idealism are enough to bring real change to Washington.  And Obama brings danger to the Democratic Party itself, the Clinton operatives say, since he is likely to stride haplessly (and hopelessly underprepared) into the single combat arena that is a general election.  Soaring words of hope are not enough when it comes to surviving the GOP’s inevitable post-convention onslaught.

In short, the Clinton people ask this simple question: do you want idealism and high-mindedness to win the day in the primaries, only to have those hopes crushed in November 2008?  (Doesn’t anyone remember George McGovern?  Walter Mondale?  Michael Dukakis?)

Or do you want to win this thing?  
         
In a trend that seemed to gain ample traction during mid-December, the “issue” for Democrats was not an issue at all, but a simple matter of electability.