NY Times debate: Republicans ready for a Mormon president?

As part of its regular "Room for Debate" feature, the New York Times is posing the question, "Are Republicans now ready for a Mormon president?" and asking 10 different correspondents to provide essays with their thoughts and insights.

"With two Mormon candidates in the 2012 Republican presidential primary race, will it be easier or harder for one of them to win the nomination?" the Times asks in the introduction to its feature. "Do Republican voters care more about their candidates' policies . . . than their religion?"

The 10 correspondents who comment — and their key points — on the issue are:

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, who suggests that "President Obama and his policies are so deeply unpopular with a majority of these voters that more of them would be likely to 'hold their nose' and vote for a Mormon, if he were indeed the GOP nominee, against the incumbent president."

Damon Linker, commentary editor of Newsweek/The Daily Beast and author of "The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders," who takes the position that "evangelicals stack the deck in such a way that a Mormon, whether deeply devout or selectively observant, is unlikely to receive the GOP nomination, regardless of the policies he or she supports."

Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, who says that polling data indicates that "being a Mormon is hardly an asset for presidential candidates, but it is not a deal-breaker for most Americans."

A collaboration of Sarah Barringer Gordon, professor of law and history at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jan Shipps, professor emerita of religious studies and history at Indiana University-Purdue University, posits that "the key for (Mitt) Romney and Jon Huntsman will be to walk the tightrope between belief and politics with dignity and openness."

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, believes that if either of the two Mormon presidential candidates "fall short, it will have a lot more to do with health care (in Mr. Romney's case) or same-sex marriage (for Mr. Huntsman) than either man's religious faith. Both men have taken positions on issues fundamentally at odds with a majority of registered Republicans, and much larger percentages of GOP party regulars oppose them on those policy matters than voice concerns about the Mormon religion."