Attacks on Religion...

I got tired of selecting two categories, "Politics" and "Religion" for these posts about candidates, so I'm inaugurating a new category: "Theo-Politics." That's where we are anyway, although I've often thought that a theo-politics can be deployed without the cheesy political piety we see in so many of the political candidates nowadays.

I don't quite agree with recent pronouncements about religion by Mr. Romney, but I must say that I find Mr. Huckabee's comments distasteful and just plain disingenuously mean:

In an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?" Romney, vying to become the first Mormon elected president, declined to answer that question during an interview Wednesday, saying church leaders in Salt Lake City had already addressed the topic.

"But I think attacking someone's religion is really going too far. It's just not the American way, and I think people will reject that,"

Really, Huckabee's attempt at creating a sharp distinction are just obnoxious to argument, to democratic culture, to church and state separation issues, to common decency... the rhetorical strategy of association is also quite transparent and not elegantly done at all. In any case, read the news item, much to tease from that exchange.