Peter, I haven’t done a study, but my impression is Byron was far from the first reporter to ask Mitt Romney about his religion; he’s even been asked about it on the debate podium. I assume you don’t want him to show underwear to Wolf Blitzer here, so I’d be curious what specifically you want to hear from Romney on his religion.

As I noted earlier in The Corner and in my syndicated column this week, he’s running for president, not my Sunday preacher. I don’t need Mitt Romney to explain how exactly the Garden of Eden was in Missouri anymore than he needs me to explain how I can possibly believe transubstantiation before he reads a Corner post. Posting to The Corner isn’t anything like being president but being president also isn’t anything like being my pastor.

From my column:

While there is a lot to quibble about with John F. Kennedy’s speech, he was prescient about one thing: “For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian— or a Baptist.” It is that realization that won Nancy French over. Now an official “Evangelical for Mitt,” French was originally staunchly against a Mormon for president for theological reasons. Ultimately, she realized, “People of faith united are much stronger than we would be if we splinter and fight amongst ourselves.”

Go ahead and ask him about his Church and race, but bear this in mind: I can’t help but think that a lot of the hostility toward Romney’s Mormonism is a hostility toward religious conservatives in general (and I thought that long before the author of God Is Not Great weighed in!). I’m going LDS ever, but I have no problem with a Mormon protecting and defending the Constitution that gives us both the right to freely believe in our different ways.