Mitt Romney is charismatic, an excellent fundraiser, and a man who can genuinely claim to be an outsider in a year when the American people are sick to death of politics as usual in Washington.

Additionally, Mitt has an excellent political strategy for 2008, one that catapulted John Kerry to victory in 2004: win Iowa, win New Hampshire and then rely on the momentum of those two early victories to act as a slingshot to victory.

Could it work? Could Mitt Romney carry the Republican banner in the 2008 presidential race? Yes! Would that be good news for the Republican Party? Not so much. Let talk about why that's the case.

Like most Americans, I would happily walk into the voting booth and cast a vote for a Mormon to be President of the United States. Unfortunately, a significant block of Americans who consider Mormons to be part of a heretical Christian cult, rightly or wrongly, won't vote a Mormon into the White House.

For example, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll back in June of 2006 found that 37 percent of Americans said "that they would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate." Similarly, in a February of 2007, USA Today poll, 24% of American adults flat out said that they would not vote for a Mormon who ran for the presidency.

Those numbers, which are none too cheery for Mitt backers become even more grim when you consider the very real possibility that many of the people who say that they won't vote for a Mormon may be Christians who typically vote Republican, but won't cast their vote for someone whom they consider to be part of a cult. This survey of Christians at ChristiaNet.com would seem to support that theory. 59% of the 2000 Christians surveyed "claimed they would not vote to elect a Mormon for president."

So far, Mitt has tried to deal with this issue by casting himself as a candidate friendly to religious voters and to my ears, he has done a pretty good job of it.

However, it hasn't worked so far and if he becomes the nominee, you can be absolutely sure that the mainstream media will use religion as a cudgel to beat him on a daily basis until the election. Nary a day would pass when you wouldn't see stories on "magic" Mormon underwear, Mormon discrimination against black Americans, Mormon polygamy, and anything else they can come up with. Day in and day out, we'd be treated to anti-Mormon guests on the cable news shows, anti-Mormon books, and even movies that portray Mormons as terrorists.

So, at the moment, roughly a quarter of Americans aren't going to vote for Mitt Romney because of his religion and given how the media will surely behave in 2008, we have every reason to think those numbers will only go up. Unfortunately, you simply cannot write off a quarter of the American public because of your religion and still win the presidency. That may not be fair, but it is something Mitt Romney has got to deal with effectively -- and soon -- if he wants to be President of the United States.

Whether it's because of the Mormon factor, his slipperiness on the issues (more on that in a moment), the fact that he's a Republican from Taxachusetts, the story about his taking a long drive with his dog on the roof of his car, an irrational dislike of people named "Mitt," or some other assorted factor or combination of factors, the American public is not warming up to Mitt Romney.

Once you get outside of Iowa and New Hampshire, where he has been spending much of his time and campaign war chest, Mitt's numbers are frighteningly bad.

Nationally, other than in August of this year, when Mitt surfed a wave of positive publicity about his victory at the Ames straw poll in Iowa, he has been mired right around the 9%-10% range in national polls. In fact, if you go all the way back to April of this year, you'll find that Mitt's national numbers are at about the same level. Just as a point of comparison, remember John McCain? You know, the guy everyone is saying can't raise money and has no chance to win? He has been -- and is still -- consistently outpolling Mitt Romney nationally. Continued...