You say Romney's Mormon, I say Huckabee's Baptist

Huckabee's inability to formulate a concise political position with respect to Romney's Mormonism seems to be troubling a lot of commentators. Juan Cole seems particularly exercised over this, comparing Huckabee's views on having a Mormon as president with the rule in Iran that only a Shiite can be president.

Such blather! We could solve the problem by requiring candidates for national office to have no religious beliefs whatsoever, but that wouldn't be popular. The compromise has been to allow private religious beliefs on the understanding that they won't interfere with public policies.

However, the minute you allow Huckabee to run and also to be a Southern Baptist, you must allow him to privately belief that Romney is a heretic. He should have been smart enough to adopt an absolute refusal from the first to answer any questions about any other candidate's religion, but no one should have asked him and his answers should have been stricken from the record.

The reverse is also true. Mormons think that mainstream Christians are in deep do-do themselves. Mainstream Christians, pretty much by definition, think that Joseph Smith didn't get a second set of prophecies through a special revelation from an angel in upstate New York. Southern Baptists may call them heretics, but everyone thinks they're nuts.

I've never quite understood how highly religious people can say that they will not let their religious beliefs interfere with their conduct in office. However, there is enough diversity in America that no one can impose religious uniformity, even if they want to. Given that, I don't think anyone--Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, whatever--should discriminate against a political candidate of another faith, merely because he is likely to burn in eternal damnation.