Established two years ago, the Faith and Freedom Coalition was intended to re-establishing the influence of conservative evangelicals in the Republican Party. Not that they much need it. Evangelicals are already influential on the right, and it shows in the slate of speakers who appeared at their conference last week in Washington, D.C. The two-day event featured presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum; conservative celebrities like Glenn Beck and Donald Trump; and popular conservative lawmakers, like Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann.
One of the first major presidential candidates to speak was Jon Huntsman, a former governor of Utah and the U.S. Ambassador to China until he resigned earlier this year.
In his speech, Huntsman focused on the common ground between Mormons and evangelicals and brandished his anti-abortion credentials. "There is something more essential than politics, and that's life. Especially child life," he said, then segued into the story of how he met his adopted daughter, who was abandoned in a Chinese vegetable market, then found and brought to the United States by a Taiwanese adoption agency. He explained how grateful he was to the birth mother for "choosing life," and ended the story with a word from his daughter, "When asked who found her in that vegetable market, she simply replies, 'Jesus.'" The audience clapped.
His ability to reach the evangelical crowd came as a surprise; Huntsman is not known for evangelical bona fides. Huntsman made his name as a moderate Republican while he served as governor, and between his service with the Obama administration as well as his unorthodox positions on climate change (i.e., he doesn't deny the science), one would think he's be anathema to large portions of the GOP base.
What's more, Huntsman, like Mitt Romney, is Mormon. A survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2007 found that 36 percent of Republican evangelicals express reluctance to vote for a Mormon presidential candidate, 39 percent of all white evangelicals have an unfavorable view of Mormons, and 45 percent of the same say that Mormons aren't actually Christians because of theological differences (for example, Mormons disavow the Trinity). Conservative evangelical hostility toward Mormons isn't as widespread as it was a decade ago -- a result, in part, of coalition politics, Romney's last presidential campaign and Glenn Beck's popularity -- but it's still a force within evangelicalism.
When it comes to Romney's difficulty courting evangelicals, the conventional wisdom is that the "Mormon problem" is an insurmountable one. But if the warm reception to Huntsman is any indication, Romney's problems have more to do with Romney himself. Romney doesn't have Huntsman's anti-abortion bona fides; he ran Massachusetts as a pro-choice governor, and only converted to the pro-life cause in 2004, as he prepared his presidential campaign.
Conservative evangelicals have never trusted Romney, and even now, it shows: When asked about his relationship with Romney at the Faith and Freedom Conference, Tony Perkins, head of the evangelical Family Research Council, was far from enthusiastic, "I haven't heard much from his campaign and I'm not sure if they're even reaching out to social conservatives."
In other words, if the "Mormon" problem is just a "Romney" problem, then a Mormon candidate like Huntsman has a real shot at the evangelical vote, and thus a real shot at the presidency.
Of course, Huntsman's faculty with evangelical activists isn't enough to help him in the Republican presidential primary. Even with their support, his moderate policy positions are likely to get him into trouble, and he's up against more established candidates like Romney and Pawlenty. As of this week, he doesn't plan to compete in the Iowa caucuses.
If the Faith and Freedom Conference was any indication, Huntsman is interested in the Republican nomination, but for later, not now. Indeed, at the moment, his campaign looks like a trial run for 2016, with his speech as a personal introduction to evangelical activists. Right now, social conservatives are scrambling for a champion, and the more established candidates like Romney and Pawlenty don't exactly fit the bill. If Obama wins re-election, they'll have the start the process again. By making his impression now, Huntsman is giving them someone to look to.
