Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman Jr. mull Mormon dilemma

SALT LAKE CITY — Don't expect to hear Mitt Romney talk a lot about being a Mormon if he runs again for president in 2012.

The same likely goes for another potential GOP candidate, Jon Huntsman Jr., the U.S. ambassador to China and a former Utah governor.

Both Romney and Huntsman have made statements recently suggesting their Mormonism will not be accepted by everyone.

In Romney's case, his advisers are acknowledging they learned in his 2008 race for the White House that his LDS faith is an impossible sell to some voters.

Should the former Utah Olympic leader make another bid for the presidency, he won't be trying to woo the largely evangelical wing of the party that doesn't accept Mormons as Christians.

"There are just some people for whom it will not be settled," Romney recently told the Boston Globe. "That's just the nature of who we are as a people. A lot of people have differing views."

Huntsman, seen as a less-likely candidate after his appointment by Democratic President Barack Obama last year, appears to be taking a different tack.

In a recent Fortune magazine interview that appeared on CNNMoney.com, his Mormon credentials were described as "soft," unlike his more devout family. His father, Jon Huntsman Sr., is an Area Seventy in the LDS Church.

The former governor noted in the interview that his children attend Catholic schools, and his adopted daughters come from different religious cultures, one Buddhist, the other Hindu.

"I can't say I am overly religious," Huntsman is quoted as saying in the interview, which refers to his consideration of a 2012 run. "I get satisfaction from many different types of religions and philosophies."

Neither Romney nor Huntsman is elaborating on the role of religion in the coming election, and their spokesmen had no comment. But it's clear both approaches are a decided shift from 2008.

Then, Romney attempted to confront concerns about his Mormonism directly, in a speech on religion delivered at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas in December 2007. Modeled after the famous speech by then-candidate John F. Kennedy addressing fears the Vatican would control a Catholic president, Romney pledged not to be distanced from his faith and stressed the beliefs he shared with conservatives.