God-o-Meter couldn’t help but chuckle at Bill Richardson’s telling an Iowa crowd that their state needs to preserve its threatened first-in-the-nation caucus status “for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord.” Will Richardson get political points for according the Hawkeye State divine purpose? Maybe. But, while God-o-Meter has read Richardson’s new book Between Worlds and therefore recognizes that he takes his Catholicism somewhat seriously, such off-the-cuff zingers may resurrect a stereotype of Democrats as invoking religion just for political purposes or as making light of religion or God. “That was a little weird,” one of the speech’s attendees told The Des Moines Register. “I don’t know what God had to do with choosing Iowa among other states.”

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