Sen. Orrin Hatch says that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney can win the White House but only after putting up with more speculation on and criticism of his LDS religion.

In a broad-ranging interview Wednesday with the Deseret Morning News' editorial board, Hatch, R-Utah, touched on a number of national and international issues.

He predicted that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., will win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination next year. And while she won't admit it publicly, Hatch said, Clinton is more worried about Romney than any other Republican candidate.

Romney, who headed up Utah's 2002 Winter Olympic Games and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, must win the Iowa caucus next January, then win the New Hampshire primary and do very well in the South Carolina primary in order to sustain and create a winning strategy into the Feb. 5 "Super-duper Tuesday," Hatch said.

Former Tennessee GOP Sen. Fred Thompson is "the wild card" in the GOP presidential sweepstakes, Hatch said. Thompson may do well and could hurt Romney's chances, or he could implode after formally getting in the race. Thompson was "quite a man about town" in D.C. when he was single before his second marriage, said Hatch. "And some of these things could be held against him by primary voters."

The Christian evangelical vote may well split on Romney, with the older evangelicals holding Romney's Mormonism against him, and younger evangelicals shunting aside that issue and supporting him, the Utah senator said.

Romney is "handsome and super clean, he's smooth," and a number of political insiders just can't believe he's that good. "But he is," said Hatch.

Regarding a pending bill that would give Utah and Washington, D.C., each a new vote in the House, Hatch said that if he can find three more U.S. senators to support the bill, he can break the filibuster, pass the bill and persuade President Bush not to veto it.

"We could then quickly appeal the new law to the U.S. Supreme Court," Hatch said. He believes the high-court justices "couldn't disagree" with him on the constitutionality of giving the district one voting U.S. House member, even though it is not technically a state, because his arguments are strong.

"We've treated the district like a state many times — for taxation, for commerce and for appointing federal judges. There are 600,000 residents of the district, and they should have a right to vote" for a representative in the U.S. House, Hatch said.