Who Are Romney's Enemies?

Take a gander at this lede and see if you can see what's wrong with it:

Mitt Romney is working to address doubts about his positions and faith, reports the New York Times' Michael Luo. In national polls Romney is still pulling single digits but his more immediate problem may be the "continued concerns of many conservative Christians about his religion" and his recent "shift from supporter of abortion rights to opponent."

Give up? Let's go the Jeopardy! route and put this in the form of a question: Have you heard or read of ANY "conservative Christian" who has had a discouraging word to say about the former Massachusetts governor because of his religion? I certainly haven't. And while I don't have the time to follow this stuff like I used to, I would think that if any prominent "religious Righter" had blasted Romney for his fealty to the People of the Extra Testament, it would have been front-page news.

Yet the default GOP presidential front-runner's religious beliefs are getting attacked - from the left. And if any "conservative Christians" (of which, for the record, I am one) do harbor any doubts about Romney's Mormonism, the constant drum-beat in the Enemy Media about it, plus the outright attacks from bigots like Al Sharpton, are herding them into Romney's camp:

Each attack on Romney's religion from outside social conservatives and the religious right gives him another chance to speak about how he shares the same values as others without having to defend or dismiss the significant theological differences that constitute a large gulf between Mormonism and mainline Christianity, as would certainly happen with an attack by Christian figures on the right.

More importantly: as Romney gets hit by people like Sharpton or other left-wingers, he may, in the eyes of some, look like the singular Republican fighting on behalf of the religious right against the left. Romney may not share the theology of the religious right, but by getting attacked over broad matters of faith from the left, he shares in their fight.

It's more than a little reminiscent of how John McCain's vicious attack on evangelicals during the 2000 GOP primaries stampeded that bloc into George W. Bush's waiting arms. If "Sailor" had kept his mouth shut, Dubya might have had to compete for those votes, as well as trying to burnish his pro-life credibility. After blasting them (us) as Pat Robertson clones and aspiring Ayatollahs, he didn't have to lift a finger as the "religious Right," and the nomination along with it, fell into his lap like overripe fruit.

The pagan left doesn't know us, and they'll never know us because to acknowledge us as we are would be to abandon all their cherished, bigoted stereotypes of ignorant, uneducated, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, anti-intellectual, hillbilly, redneck theocrats who spend all their free time peeping in bedroom keyholes and plotting the imposition of a sexual Gestapo.

I won't purport to speak for all conservative Christians, but I suffer from no paranoid misapprehensions that Mitt Romney aspires to be a real-life Nehemiah Scudder. It's rather telling that libs are so desperate for us to serve as their irreligious catspaws - and amusing that it's having the opposite effect.