Won’t stay in Vegas.

Rick Perry was either surprisingly  (to me,
at least) unprepared for the Jeffress question, or (more likely) couldn’t manage
a coherent delivery of the answer he’d prepared. By contrast, Mitt Romney
came totally prepared, and hit the ball out of the park.

The
colloquy (reprinted after the jump) went down like this. Anderson Cooper
asked, “Should voters pay attention to a candidate’s religion.” First,
Rick Santorum designated the moral teachings of your faith as fair game,
but not your “road to salvation.” Newt Gingrich followed with the
American civil religious criterion: it’s not which God you pray to but
accepting that you are endowed by your Creator with certain inalienable
rights.

Then Cooper asked if Perry would repudiate the comments of “that pastor who
introduced you on that stage”–specifying the remarks
denigrating Mormonism as a cult that Robert Jeffress made after his
introduction. To call Perry’s response fumbling would be charitable:

Well, our faith — I can no more
remove my faith than I can that I’m the son of a tenant farmer. I mean,
the issue, are we going to be individuals who stand by our faith? I
have said I didn’t agree with that individual’s statement. And our
founding fathers truly understood and had an understanding of — of
freedom of religion.

And this country is based on, as —
as Newt talked about, these values that are so important as we go
forward. And the idea that we should not have our freedom of — of
religion to be taken away by any means, but we also are a country that
is free to express our opinions. That individual expressed an opinion. I
didn’t agree with it, Mitt, and I said so. But the fact is, Americans
understand faith. And what they’ve lost faith in is the current
resident of the White House.

If you look closely, you
can discern the bones of a prepared answer: the witness to his own
faith, wrapped in his humble origins; his standing on his disagreement (that was enough
for Donohue, wasn’t it?); his embrace of religious freedom, even for
the likes of Jeffress; and the little joke about Obama. An
evasive answer, but a better performer might have gotten away with it.

Finally
it was the aggrieved’s turn, and Romney didn’t let the opportunity
slip, turning attention back from Jeffress’ cult comment to the
introduction itself, where the minister called on evangelicals
to vote for “the genuine Christian.” That enabled Romney to both give a
stirring testimonial to the Constitution’s bar on religious tests for
office and to lecture Perry on how he ought to have responded, right
there on stage: “I’d have said, ‘Reverend Jeffress, you got that wrong.
We should select people not
based upon their faith.'” Whereupon Perry could do nothing but lamely
repeat that he couldn’t manage any more by way of apology than to say he
disagreed with Jeffress. “That’s fine,” responded Romney.

So a walk-off victory for Romney–on the Las Vegas stage. But it remains to be seen
whether the GOP’s white evangelical base will embrace the constitutional
proposition that he so well articulated, or exercise their
indubitable right to vote in the primaries against someone whose
faith they dislike. And Perry’s given them the nod to do the latter.

GOP Presidential Debate in Las Vegas, 9/19/11
Exchange on Religion

COOPER: And welcome back to the CNN GOP debate live from the Venetian
in Las Vegas. Let’s continue. We’ve got an e-mail question that was
left at cnnpolitics.com. This is from a Mike Richards who says: “With
the controversy surrounding Robert Jeffress, is it acceptable to let the
issue of a candidate’s faith shape the debate?”

Senator
Santorum, this is in reference to a Baptist pastor who, at the Values
Voter Summit, after introducing Governor Rick Perry, said of — said
that “Mitt Romney is not a Christian,” and that “Mormonism is a cult.”
Those were his words.

Should…

(BOOING)

COOPER: Should voters pay attention to a candidate’s religion?

SANTORUM: I think they should pay attention to the candidate’s values, what the candidate stands for.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

SANTORUM: That’s what is at play. And the person’s faith — and
you look at that faith and what the faith teaches with respect to morals
and values that are reflected in that person’s belief structure. So
that’s — those are important things.

I — I’m a
Catholic. Catholic has social teachings. Catholic has teachings as to
what’s right and what’s wrong. And those are legitimate things for
voters to look at, to say if you’re a faithful Catholic, which I try to
be — fall short all the time, but I try to be — and — and it’s a
legitimate thing to look at as to what the tenets and teachings of that
faith are with respect to how you live your life and — and how you
would govern this country.

With respect to what is the
road to salvation, that’s a whole different story. That’s not
applicable to what — what the role is of being the president or a
senator or any other job.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Speaker Gingrich, you agree with that?

GINGRICH: Well, I think if the question is, does faith matter?
Absolutely. How can you have a country which is founded on truths which
begins we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights?
How can you have the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which says religion,
morality and knowledge being important, education matters. That’s the
order: religion, morality and knowledge.

Now, I happen
to think that none of us should rush in judgment of others in the way in
which they approach God. And I think that all of us up here I believe
would agree. (APPLAUSE)

But I think all of us would
also agree that there’s a very central part of your faith in how you
approach public life. And I, frankly, would be really worried if
somebody assured me that nothing in their faith would affect their
judgments, because then I’d wonder, where’s your judgment — how can you
have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power
if you don’t pray?

(APPLAUSE)

Who you pray
to, how you pray, how you come close to God is between you and God. But
the notion that you’re endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary
on what we mean by America.

COOPER: Governor Perry, Mitt
Romney asked you to repudiate the comments of that pastor who
introduced you on that stage. He didn’t make the comments on the stage;
he made them afterward in an interview. Will you repudiate those
comments?

ROMNEY: Well, our faith — I can no more
remove my faith than I can that I’m the son of a tenant farmer. I mean,
the issue, are we going to be individuals who stand by our faith? I
have said I didn’t agree with that individual’s statement. And our
founding fathers truly understood and had an understanding of — of
freedom of religion.

And this country is based on, as —
as Newt talked about, these values that are so important as we go
forward. And the idea that we should not have our freedom of — of
religion to be taken away by any means, but we also are a country that
is free to express our opinions. That individual expressed an opinion. I
didn’t agree with it, Mitt, and I said so. But the fact is, Americans
understand faith. And what they’ve lost faith in is the current
resident of the White House.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Time.

Governor Romney, is that — is that acceptable to you?

ROMNEY: You know, with — with regards to the disparaging comments
about my faith, I’ve heard worse, so I’m not going to lose sleep over
that.

(LAUGHTER)

What I actually found was
most troubling in what the reverend said in the introduction was he
said, in choosing our nominee, we should inspect his religion. And
someone who is a good moral person is not someone who we should select;
instead, we should choose someone who subscribes to our religious
belief.

That — that idea that we should choose people
based upon their religion for public office is what I find to be most
troubling, because the founders of this country went to great length to
make sure — and even put it in the Constitution — that we would not
choose people who represent us in government based upon their religion,
that this would be a nation that recognized and respected other faiths,
where there’s a plurality of faiths, where there was tolerance for other
people and faiths. That’s bedrock principle.

And it was
that principle, Governor, that I wanted you to be able to, no, no,
that’s wrong, Reverend Jeffress. Instead of saying as you did, “Boy,
that introduction knocked the ball out of the park,” I’d have said,
“Reverend Jeffress, you got that wrong. We should select people not
based upon their faith.” Even though — and I don’t suggest you
distance yourself from your faith any more than I would. But the concept
that we select people based on the church or the synagogue they go to, I
think, is a very dangerous and — and enormous departure from the
principles of our — of our Constitution.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Would you still like him to say that?

(UNKNOWN): I’m sorry?

COOPER: Would — would you still like the governor to say that? Or was that something you wanted him to…

ROMNEY: I’ll let him — that’s his choice.

COOPER: Do you want to respond to that, Governor Perry?

PERRY: I have. I said I did not agree with the — Pastor
Jeffress’s remarks. I don’t agree with them. I — I can’t apologize
any more than that.

ROMNEY: That’s fine.