Upon researching Mitt Romney I noticed one trait that appeared to be consistent in both he and President Obama. The American public find them both religiously ambiguous to some degree. Although it could be argued that Romney faces an even steeper climb than Obama, it can't be denied that the nation's current President has had his share of public relations drama regarding religiousity. How much does the public image that the majority holds of a religion play into their political decision making? The issue becomes much more complex when one considers the disparities that exist between individuals in terms of their relationship to a specific theology. I found this Washington's post article interesting, particularly when they compared comfortability of American public opinion between candidates on the horizontal scale just before the fifth paragraph,
Obama-Romney faith comparison
As the Washington-post article points out, religion and relgiousity do matter. Most Americans are religious, and regardless of if they intend to let religion affect their political decisions or not, the fact that they are conscious of the differences in personal religious affiliations will most likely hold some significance.
I am interested to see how Obama and the re-vamped Obama campaign 2012 will deal with Romney if he does in fact become the Republican candidate. Will Obama make religion a focal point in his race against Romney? I think it will be interesting to see. What does it mean for America to elect a Mormon president? But at the same time, what does it mean if Americans elect a President who once promised to bring change and progress to Washington will accept a campaign as tired as the one that nods at religious intolerance as a way to win the race.
I thought the article you posted was very interesting as it shows how little Americans really know or care about the religion of their politicians. It shocked me that 18% of the people polled thought that Obama was a Muslim, that is almost a fifth of all surveyed. These statics may actually show that religion is not as important a voting factor as once thought. I was surprised to also learn that more Americans actually have similar religious beliefs to Romney than they do with President Obama. Unfortunately, though for Romney, I feel like the gap between Mormon beliefs and those of Protestant Christians voters may be a barrier too large to overcome for the GOP hopeful.
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