By Rob Nikolewski | Capitol Report New Mexico

When is it okay to be a religious bigot?

Apparently, when you’re a liberal who really dislikes Mitt Romney.

Rob Nikolewski

In recent weeks, a number of articles with national distribution discussed the Republican presidential candidate and his Mormon faith in terms you would never hear if Romney belonged to any other religion with millions of followers.

Last week, the progressive weekly The New Republic published a storywith the following headline:

“Why’s Romney So Good at Fundraising? Mormonism”

Now imagine the outcry if a conservative magazine wrote a story about, say, Sen. Joseph Lieberman when he ran as Al Gore’s vice-presidential pick in 2000 and put up a headline that said:

“Why’s Lieberman’s So Good at Fundraising? He’s Jewish”

There would have been hell to pay – and deservedly so.

Then there was an article in the June 13 edition of Time magazine that went even further.

It was written by a guy named Justin Frank, M.D. entitled “The Root of Mitt Romney’s Comfort with Lying.”

First off, the column was accompanied by the sub-headline “Republicans on the Couch” and the tagline identifies Frank as a psychoanalyst. The implication is clear: “Those conservatives are crazy. Why are they so hung up on things like deficits? They must be neurotic!”

It’s the kind of snobbery of average Americans seen in the book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” which so many on the political left (Bill Maher and Michael Moore) can never seem to shake. It’s kind of hard to win over Joes and Janes you say you identify with when you spend so much time insulting them.

But getting back to the not-so-good doctor’s column, he claims Romney is a hopeless liar and attributes this affliction to – you guessed it, Bucky! – being a Mormon:

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