The elections this month were a blow to the religious right in America. The most prominent advocate of their policies of banning all abortion, all legal recognition of gay couples, and embryonic stem cell research was Rick Santorum, a senator for Pennsylvania. He was the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, a rising star of the theocratic right, and still lost by a staggering 18 points.

The other champion of the religious right, Senator George Allen, also lost his race in Virginia, after he blurted out a racist comment at a campaign stop. Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas remains an option, but his declaration that he has but one constituent — God Almighty — makes him a long shot, even for the lunatic fringe.

And so the religious right didn’t just lose an election they lost all their candidates for 2008 as well. They have to contemplate a pro-choice, pro-gay Rudy Giuliani or a John McCain, who once called Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster, an “agent of intolerance” and likened his movement to the Nation of Islam.

Politics, of course, abhors a vacuum and with so many primary voters without a candidate a new favourite has emerged. Mitt Romney is the Republican governor of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the nation.

His CV is impressive. His father was governor of Michigan and a member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet. Romney, a graduate of Harvard Business School, went on to become chief executive of Bain & Company, a blue-chip consulting firm. He subsequently founded a successful investment company, Bain Capital.

In 1999, when the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City was on the verge of collapse after a series of ethical and financial mishaps, Romney was brought in to turn it around. He succeeded spectacularly. A potentially embarrassing disaster made a profit of $100m (£52m).

Four years ago he was elected governor of Massachusetts. This isn’t as strange as it sounds. Massachusetts has an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and has often elected Republican governors for balance.

And Romney’s record is impressive in many ways: he inherited a fiscal disaster and navigated a way to surpluses the Gordon Brown way, by closing tax loopholes, increasing government fees but leaving basic tax rates unchanged. A big capital gains tax windfall also helped him turn a $3 billion deficit to a $500m surplus in three years. On healthcare, with the Democratic legislature, he helped innovate a fascinating experiment. While keeping the bulk of provision private Massachusetts mandated that every citizen have health insurance. It became something like car insurance — with punitive fees if you try to avoid it. The state then provided subsidies to help the working poor afford a policy; made premiums adjustable with income; and allowed anyone to buy it independently of their employer.

The idea was to provide a guarantee of universal healthcare without constructing a statist behemoth like the National Health Service. It has yet to go into effect, and so it’s impossible to judge its impact. But it remains one of the most innovative policy initiatives in the country.

All of this gives Romney well-deserved mainstream cred. His fiscal conservatism comes as a relief after the insanity of the Bush years. His engagement with healthcare has forged a centrist path that could serve him well in a general election.

But to appeal to the Republican base he has allied these positions with support for a federal amendment to ban gay unions, and for laws that would criminalise all abortion, except in cases of rape or incest. This is a shift from 2002 when he promised the voters of liberal Massachusetts that, as governor, he would “preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose”. On gay rights Romney is governor of the only state in America to grant gay couples the right to marry. But he strongly opposed it, and also opposed civil unions.

In the last year or so he has made a huge effort to reach out to the evangelical base. Instead of being embarrassed by being a governor of liberal Massachusetts, he has shrewdly turned it to his advantage, routinely lambasting his own state as he tours the south. Not seeking re-election in Massachusetts, he can afford to do this (even though his approval ratings in his home state have plunged and his Republican successor lost badly this month). So where’s the catch?

Romney has proven himself a competent executive, he is a red governor from a blue state, he’s a fiscal conservative, a health policy innovator — and he’s good looking in a generic all-American way. The one problem is that he is now, and always has been, a Mormon. This would and should be irrelevant, except that his primary campaign must necessarily appeal to the Republican base on evangelical Christian grounds. When a political party has become a religious organisation, as the Republicans have under Bush and Rove, it’s hard to nominate a heretic as leader. Mormons insist they are Christians but not many other Christians easily agree.

Many evangelicals are keen to look past the issue, arguing that private faith and public office are unrelated issues. But this is a little rich coming from people who believe George W Bush is divinely guided. And the more the actual doctrines of Mormonism emerge, the deeper the awkwardness could be. All humans can become gods? Jesus returned to earth after his resurrection . . . in America? Moreover, the secrecy of the Mormon leadership, its insistence on mandatory tithing, and accusations of cult-like practices are likely to stir at least some controversy among the very religious right whose support Romney badly needs.

Personally, I have no interest in someone’s private faith in his or her pursuit of public office. Romney, to my mind, should be judged on his public record. The trouble is: this is not what the religious right has come to expect in a leader. They look for a religious figure in a political leader, “one of them”.

Romney has made enormous strides in persuading them that on their key issues — abortion, marriage, gays, stem cells — he is indeed one of them. But the worry remains that the base won’t really turn out for a Mormon. And so the religious right, bereft of alternatives, may find itself hoist on its own theocratic petard. Maybe, eventually, they will learn to moderate. But only, I suspect, if the sole alternative is President Hillary Clinton.

And so Romney’s deepest asset may well become finding the right opponent. And that, paradoxically, is up to the Democrats.

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