Posted by:
jw the inquizzinator
(
)
Date: May 02, 2011 10:59PM
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48753.htmlSnippets:
"The presence of a second Mormon in the race could help Romney by making the church seem less unusual to those who are unfamiliar with it. But it seems just as likely that Huntsman, with his strikingly similar profile, would erode Romney’s base of support, reordering the GOP field."
"There is another tension that could play out in uncomfortable ways between Romney, the devout Mormon who has organized his life around his faith, and Huntsman, a more secularized figure who is open about his distance from his church...."
"...Huntsman, too, went on a two-year mission, to Taiwan. It was there that he became fluent in Chinese. But his family — wife Mary Kaye and their seven children, two of them adopted from Asia — are not strict Mormons, and he has never served in church leadership. More than a few eyebrows were raised in the church when Huntsman’s eldest daughter, Abigail, was married last year not in a Mormon temple, but at the National Cathedral by an Episcopal priest."
"Causing even more of a buzz within the tight-knit church was a blunt interview Huntsman gave last year to Fortune that nearly everyone interviewed for this story brought up, without prompting."
"I can’t say I am overly religious,” he told the magazine. “I get satisfaction from many different types of religions and philosophies.” He pointed out that his children attended Catholic schools and his adopted daughters came from Buddhist and Hindu cultures."