Written by Pat Jobe   

Can Obama carry Mississippi?
Or more broadly, Can Obama carry any of the states in the deep South where African Americans constitute a huge voting block? Not likely, say most of the political pundits who draw up the maps and define the battleground states.
But the GOP faces an almost unspoken problem. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism is considered the least of his problems in the vaulted brains of Washington and New York political thinkers. What they fail to understand is that Mormons are considered crazier than outhouse rats among evangelical Christians of the deep South.
Imagine 20 or 30 percent of these evangelicals simply staying home. Obama took 42 percent in Mississippi last time out, 47 in Georgia, and 45 in South Carolina. With the possible exception of Georgia, these are not really considered close races, but huge numbers of evangelicals sitting on their hands would certainly change the balance in these states in November. These are must-win states for Romney. A might-win by Obama would certainly turn the election into a rout.
How could such a thing be possible?
Evangelicals believe Mormons have no theological legs to stand on. Their disdain for Obama is that he is pro-gay and pro-reproductive freedom. But their disdain for Romney runs almost as deeply. He is part of a religion that so badly misses the point of Biblical Christianity that Romney and his ilk are as doomed to eternal damnation as the sexual deviates among the Democrats. That’s the way they see it.
Most of the thinkers at the high altitudes of political America simply don’t get these beliefs or their impact on American voting. They have overlooked how badly Romney was beaten in the deep South primaries. They have only a glancing knowledge of how influential religion is in the politics of the deep South.
The Mormon problem might also hurt in Virginia and North Carolina where Obama won last time and two states that are considered in play this time.
Christian evangelicals are concrete thinkers. They see reality completely in terms of black and white. As Richard Clark reported he was allegedly told by George W., “I don’t do nuance.”
Readers will also remember that W. declared his central political inspiration was Jesus Christ.
As nuanced as some of their leaders may be, church leaders who will hold their noses and vote for the nonBiblical Romney, the rank and file believers know that these latter day saints ain’t saints at all.
Fortunately for Romney, the leaders of the national Democratic party don’t understand this either. To the dismay of local leaders in the South, national money and leadership will stay out of the deep South, and Romney may well win despite his failure to do so during the primaries. But there is a big log in his road to the White House. In Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia it might just be the log that trips him.