As religion becomes an ever-more significant issue on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney's Mormonism will be off-limits as a subject for the opposition, Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod said on Sunday.
"We've said that's not fair game," he said on CNN's State of the Union. When asked whether the campaign "repudiate[s] the idea that Mormonism should be on the table" this election season, Axelrod insisted: "absolutely."
He added, however, that Romney should to come out stronger against attacks on Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A recent GOP ad proposal unearthed by the New York Times that aimed to focus in on Obama's relationship with the pastor brought the racially-charged issue to the forefront of the campaign this week. While Romney repudiated the ad, Axelrod and he wasn't vehement enough in his disapproval.
"We wish that Governor Romney would stand up as strongly and as resolutely, consistently, to refute these kinds of things on his side," he said. "Instead, he's amplified them in the past and he's put logs on that fire, and that's not leadership," Axelrod said, later adding that Romney had been "grudging" in his position on the issue, and that sent "the wrong signals."
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