Via David Brody, skip ahead to 8:15 for the key part. The quote via NBC:

“It’s been a rough month. We have been brutalized and beaten up and chewed up in the press to where I need this today,” she said. “We are being brutalized by our opponents, and our own party. So much of that is, I think they look at him, because of his faith. He is the only true conservative – well, there are some conservatives. And they’re there for good reasons. And they may feel like God called them too. But I truly feel like we are here for that purpose.”

She’s a compelling speaker — 15 minutes off the cuff here — but I don’t buy that boldfaced part at all. It may be that some wealthy RINO-y GOP donors are leery of Perry in part because of his faith, but that Bush guy to whom Perry is so often compared was pretty religious too and he managed to do okay with them. And needless to say, it’s not attacks ads bankrolled by fatcats that have stripped 22 points from him over the past two months. He’s been “brutalized” because of his own horrible debate performances, punctuated by the atomic gaffe of accusing his base of being heartless for disagreeing with him on in-state tuition for illegals. And who did those 22 points end up going to? Not to Romney but to Herman Cain — who’s actually an associate minister of a Baptist church in Atlanta.

I’m trying to imagine Mitt Romney, who faces a genuine liability in the general election (less so in the primary) because of his faith, watching this video and trying to fathom how being too Christian might impede a candidate’s path to the Republican nomination.

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