Mitt Romney is the only major GOP candidate still married to his first wife, who he still refers to as his sweetheart on the campaign trail. There isn't even a hint of infidelity on his part -- and if there were , we would certainly have heard of it by now. So why the articles about polygamy three and four generations back in his family?

While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.

Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

The article goes into intriguing historical detail about various nineteenth century ancestors and their polygamous marriages, all of which is interesting to me as a historian and a student of theology, but as an American preparing to vote in 2007 it is utterly useless and pointless.

I think there are two main reasons for this. The first, of course, is simply raw, anti-Mormon bigotry on the part of some in the media. But it goes beyond that, given that we don't see any articles about the family history of Mormons Harry Reid or Orrin Hatch. The problem is that Romney is an attractive candidate who could possibly become the next President of the United States (or at least the GOP nominee for that office), and that scares some folks in the media, as Dean Barnett points out.

TO START WITH THE OBVIOUS, MITT ROMNEY IS THE most conservative candidate in the field who has, at present, a chance of winning. The press doesnÂ’t like conservatives, or at the very least, is more hostile to conservatives than it is to liberals. The press sees everything regarding a conservative in the worst possible light; liberals are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.

A second reason is that Mitt Romney doesnÂ’t look like a politician should, or at least the way the media thinks a Republican politician should. Given that Romney is constantly praised for his patrician demeanor, his impeccable manner and his smooth-as-silk politicking, I know this point is counter-intuitive, but bear with me.

The press has come to expect Republicans to fit certain molds. They are supposed to be inarticulate and not quick on their feet. The press has stereotyped every Republican presidential nominee since Ford in this way. They are also supposed to be intellectually unimaginative or downright unintelligent. Again, every Republican presidential nominee since Ford has had to live with this label. They are further required to be creatures of politics who have accomplished nothing or next to nothing outside of the political world. Lastly, all Republicans ought to have a bit of Elmer Gantry in them. They should preach about morality and piety, but they should always be obliging enough to have at least a few skeletons jangling in their closet.

Mitt Romney fails to live up to any of these stereotypes. Glib and articulate, itÂ’s hard to imagine Romney ever fearing a press conference or a debate. Intellectually, Romney graduated HarvardÂ’s Business and Law Schools with top honors. Furthermore, it seems like heÂ’s completely unfamiliar with the media dictates that Republicans should wrestle with English like itÂ’s a hostile foreign language and make themselves available for lampooning as dullards.

Even more gratingly, Mitt Romney didnÂ’t become a full-time politician until 2002. Until then, he had been a phenomenally successful businessman who had made hundreds of millions of dollars in a fiercely competitive industry while earning a reputation for honesty and intellectual probity.

Lastly, and probably most frustratingly for the media, the Romney closet is depressingly barren. When Mitt Romney talks about family values, heÂ’s able to point to his own wife of 40 years and a brood of children and grandchildren that seems too good even for a Christmas card.

In short, Mitt Romney is more formidable than a Republican presidential candidate has any right being. He is a fat target in a way that a guy like Mike Huckabee never could be, even if Huckabee hadnÂ’t lost all that weight.

In short, he really doesn't have the vulnerabilities that many GOP candidates have had over the years, and so they are casting about for anything to stop this candidacy cold.

The media, of course, will draw "appropriate boundaries" in Election 2008. We will not get media rehashing of the problems in the Clinton marriage. Obama's father and step-father and the implications of his religious upbringing are off-limits, we are told. Biden's plagiarism and racist comments, and the tendency of John Edwards to excuse religious bigotry will also be swept under the rug. But the marital history of Romney's ancestors over a century ago, as well as his religious faith, will remain fair game, because they have nothing substantive to strike at him with.

H/T Captains Quarters, Blogs for Bush, Outside the Beltway, Conservative Times, Iowa Voice

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