I know we’ve been bashed over the head repeatedly during the last 8 hours, with reactions to Romney’s speech, so most of this will shift the focus a bit. But, first a quick synopsis of my thoughts.

Romney’s speech was bold. It was genuinely moving at points, and spoke to the sincere convictions of millions of Americans. But, more importantly, it was honest. Romney’s no JFK, but he seemed genuinely Romney, and for the first time in months, I got the feeling that Romney might be enough in end.

But, it hasn’t been seen this way universally, across the blogosphere. AllahPundit over at HotAir describes it as essentially a cynical “pander” to evangelicals. I think Allah’s argument, while understandable given his background, fails to pass the smell test. Even if we accept the premise that this speech is objectively more likely to appeal to evangelicals, we’re still left scratching our heads a bit; doesn’t a cynical pander need to be, well, cynical? In other words, don’t we need to sort of assume that the pandering is particularly likely to work? I wrote a post last night about the speech, in which I speculated that Romney might chose to go a more ecumenical, tolerance oriented route. I wrote at the time “even with the most stunningly brilliant “Faith” speech, Romney’s not going to be able to Out-evangelical a Baptist Minister. If these voters eventually come to Romney’s camp, they’ll do so because of something besides values (taxes, the Dumond fall-out, immigration, etc).” I believe that more then ever, and I think the data confirms my point; Romney had alot to lose by talking forthrightly and passionately about faith, its our role in our nation’s history, and plausibly, if only by implication, leaving atheists and agnostics out of that narrative.

In this Iowa Zogby poll, Huckabee leads Romney by 20 points among born-agains. The Des-Moines register poll shows a similar 16 point difference. There’s a startling 32 point gap in the Rasmussen poll. Unless the Romney camp knows something we don’t, and something that’s not manifest in the polls (i.e, these Huckabee supporters are unusually lightly committed), it seems pretty likely that a strong plurality, and perhaps even a majority of evangelical caucus-goers, will vote for Mike Huckabee on January 3rd. The only way this doesn’t happen, is if Mike Huckabee’s numbers start trending sharply downward everywhere, in which case Romney’s a pretty likely recipient of the evangelical fall-out, speech or no speech.

Something Romney does worry about, on the other hand, is what an explicit evangelical plea would do to his increasingly solid numbers in secular New Hampshire. Right now, Romney leads there by 15.8 points in the RCP. He’s gone up 4 points in a month, while his closest competitor has gone down by nearly the same amount in that time frame. If the story of Iowa is that Romney failed to close the deal, and an erstwhile populist swooped in and stole his hard courted supporters, the story of New Hampshire has been precisely the opposite. Romney’s competed against two serious challengers, both of whom are good fits for the state and both of whom have devoted a high degrees of resources to campaigning there. Not only is he winning against that backdrop, but he’s hardly stumbled once, and there are no Buchananite populists in sight, to do to Romney in NH, what Huckabee’s done to him in Iowa.

Simply put, if Romney does lose Iowa (and I’m not convinced he will), his strong numbers in NH are about the only things keeping him remotely viable. Giving an overtly evangelically-oriented speech, seems only likely to hurt him in that context. So the first thing I’d say, if Romney’s given a cynical, pandering evangelical speech, then I have to wonder how good at being cynical he is.

But, I don’t think that’s what he’s done. When I see pundits as diverse as Chris Matthews and Charles Krauthammer, guys who have no reason to love the religious right, effusively praising Romney, I think something more serious is going on here. Romney’s speech wasn’t an explicitly evangelical appeal, nor was it an ecumenical, hand-holding, brotherhood of man, oration. Instead, it was a plea for a more sane view of religion in society, one that eschews both extremes. As he noted:

I’m not sure that we fully appreciate the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty. I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired … so grand … so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too ‘enlightened’ to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe’s churches. And though you will find many people of strong faith there, the churches themselves seem to be withering away. Infinitely worse is the other extreme, the creed of conversion by conquest: violent Jihad, murder as martyrdom… killing Christians, Jews, and Muslims with equal indifference. These radical Islamists do their preaching not by reason or example, but in the coercion of minds and the shedding of blood. We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny, and the boundless suffering these states and groups could inflict if given the chance.

For me, Romney’s message distilled was: “We have a particular type of religious heritage, which has done us a great deal of good, and without which we wouldn’t be the nation we are today. When we forget this, minimize it, or try to forcibly eject all religion from the public square, we act in the worst of our traditions. Here are the alternatives, and what they suggest about the uniqueness of our system; a system that means that a Mormon boy can dream of being president, and as long as he understands and reveres these traditions, upholds the constitution, and serves the American people without theological bias or discrimination, maybe his dream can come true”. It was fundamentally a speech about the role of faith in America’s public and private character, an ode which I think will resonate with a goodly number of Americans. No, it didn’t explicitly mention the role of atheism or agnosticism, but then it wasn’t meant to; it wasn’t speaking to that sort of question. And with all due respect to guys like Jonah, Allah, and Ramesh, America has gotten awfully silly if you can no longer have a discussion specifically about religion, without mentioning (irrespective of it’s relevancy) that atheism exists too.