Paul Waldmann and Dana Goldstein discuss various dimensions of an Edwards-Romney race, but here's what I see as the most interesting one: what happens with the religious fundamentalists in the GOP base wigged out by Romney's Mormonism? Pam Spaulding notes an influential Dallas pastor expressing the widely held view that Mormons aren't Christians, and that this disqualifies Romney from the presidency. With Romney's religion priming them to look at everything through an even more identity-politics tinted lens than usual, would GOP base voters seek the demographic comfort of a Democrat with a mainstream Christian background and a thick southern accent?
In fact, this is what the polling data suggests. In SurveyUSA's state-by-state polls, Edwards beats Romney by 6 in Alabama and by 10 in Kentucky, while no other Democrat leads any Republican in these states. In the other two states of the old Confederacy polled, MO and VA, Edwards' lead over Romney is the biggest for any Democrat over any Republican.
With the fifteen years of anti-Hillary propaganda that GOP base voters have been fed, you could get them to come out and vote for a wadded-up piece of aluminum foil over her. And the sorts of GOP base voters who freak out at the thought of Romney are probably going to believe really weird things about Obama. Which is not to say that Hillary and Obama can't beat Romney nationally -- they probably would. But Edwards alone has a chance to neutralize or convert people in the core of the GOP base.
