ArcaMax

"Mitt Romney is lucky," Brody told me in an interview. The presumptive Republican nominee "has done virtually nothing with the evangelical crowd, but he's got a core group that will come out just to vote against President Barack Obama."

That's a big deal. President George Bush was re-elected in 2004 with the help of an unusually high turnout of religious conservatives, including in black churches, heavily encouraged by Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist.

Which made me wonder whether Obama or Romney will pull off a similar appeal to religious conservatives this year. I asked Brody in a later email exchange how he thought teavangelicals would respond if the president resumed a theme that he pushed as a candidate in 2008. In a high-profile speech at a black church, he won big applause with a strong appeal for marriage before parenthood, personal responsibility and responsible parenting.

Sure, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, as many will recall, was irritated enough to threaten Obama's reproductive organs in a sharp sound bite picked up by a Fox News microphone. But Jackson's disapproval appeared only to bring more applause for Obama, even from conservatives.

Brody was intrigued by the suggestion. "I think if President Obama did a speech like that it would make teavangelical voters wonder why Romney hasn't done the same," he wrote. While a speech like that wouldn't win a lot of white teavangelicals, it could endear him a bit more with independents and "African-American teavangelical voters" and "actually make Romney look weaker in this area."

Maybe. It is a speech that may not happen, but I'd like to cover it if it did.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com.

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