DNC: Obama Won't Make Romney's Mormon Faith an Election Issue

The suggestion that President Obama's reelection team will try to use Mitt Romney's Mormon faith against him is "utter nonsense," the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee said this week.

"That is just preposterous," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday when asked about recent comments from Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Mormon himself, who suggested Tuesday that the president's reelection team is "going to throw the Mormon church at [Romney] like you can't believe."

"That suggestion is utter nonsense. Let’s remember that President Obama has had so many things hurled at him—birth certificate questions, whether he is or is not a Christian," Wasserman continued (via Politico). "For them to suggest that religion will be injected [into the election] by President Obama and the Democratic Party, I mean, I think they need to take a look inward at the accusations that their party and their supporters have hurled before they take that step."

Far be it from us to predict events in a political campaign, but Schultz may be right, just not for the reasons she stated. According to a Pew report on Mormons in America, Evangelical Christians—a key base of the Republican party—are significantly more skeptical of Mormonism than the general population: two-thirds of Americans identify Mormonism as Christian, but only half of Evangelicals do, for instance. In other words, Romney's faith was most likely more of a vulnerability in the GOP primary, where he faces rivals who are more appealing to conservative Evangelicals, than it would be in the general election.

Romney, however, has already faced one pointed attack about his Mormonism this week, and it's not out the question that he will face more in the coming months, regardless of where they originate. On Monday, as CNN reports, a Ron Paul supporter confronted Romney with a passage from Mormon scripture that disparages darker skin, and asked the candidate "I guess my question is, do you believe it's a sin for a white man to marry and procreate with a black?" Romney replied with a terse "No. Next question."