On the Republican side, recent data indicates Mitt Romney is inching up in popularity in the crucial states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He has 24 percent of the vote in NH, behind McCain but solidly ahead of Giuliani. In Iowa, he is third with 14 percent to McCain’s 26 percent and Giuliani’s 19 percent.

On a nationwide basis, Romney’s support has slowly been inching up, as a look at these results and this graph indicate. Reports from the field indicate Romney has the most efficient campaigning organization.

The Bloggernacle loves to play down Romney’s chance in this election, but I don’t think that’s wise. If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I’d put good money on him winning the Republican nomination. The general election is unfortunately another story, however.

UPDATE: This poll shows Romney solidly ahead in NH.

Overall, I thought “The Mormons” was a wonderful documentary that showed most of the positive things about the Church from a secular perspective while also exploring many of the criticisms in a fair way.

In this post, I would like to touch on one area where I thought the documentary really fell short, and this is the area of how we treat intellectual dissidents.

UPDATE: Look at this link for complete transcripts from “The Mormons.” Both Elder Holland and Daniel Peterson touch on this issue pretty eloquently.

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I really have to work on my dissertation, and the “Romney thing” is become increasingly tepid and overdone in the ‘Nacle –

BUT – (this is way too good to pass up) – Romney just revealed his favorite novel, and suddenly I just might vote for him after all (okay, not really). Find out what it is below the fold:

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We had some downtime over the weekend, and the reason was that we installed a new version of our software. One of the main problems we’ve had for about the last year or so is random errors interfering with responses to posts. If you have comments on the quality of the software, please comment here. We would like feedback on how it is working. Thanks.

I know there are discussions going on elsewhere on the Bloggernacle, but I wanted to offer a few quick thoughts and solicit some comments.

1)I was only going to watch the first night’s programming for a few minutes and then go to bed, but I was really drawn in by the quality of this production.
2)Terryl Givens got a very large percentage of face time. He is one of the most articulate people I have ever seen, member or non-member. Wow, what a way with words! (Yes, I read his book, but he is even more impressive on-screen).
3)There was too much emphasis on the Mountain Meadows Massacre and polygamy, but I expected worse. They did a good job of putting the MMM in its historical context. And ending with Elder Oaks expressing regret was a good closing.
4)Overall, looking at the first night’s show, this is about the best we can expect from a documentary done by non-members. Even the evangelical Mouw was mostly sympathetic to us (yes, I know he is one of the few, and he has a history of being sympathetic, but still his comments were quite good).