Amy Sullivan of Washington Monthly on why The Atlantic, the Weekly Standard, and the National Review are wrong about Mitt Romney, the conservative Massachusetts governor who wants to be America’s first Mormon president: “The first time I ever heard about Mormons was in fifth grade, sitting in a basement classroom of my Baptist church, watching a filmstrip about cults. Our Sunday school class was covering a special month-long unit on false religions; in the mail-order curriculum, Mormonism came somewhere between devil worshippers and Jim Jones.” Evangelical politicos are saying much the same thing (as Sullivan; not her fifth grade Sunday school teachers) off the record, which raises the question of why the mainstream press — even more than the conservative mags above — are keeping Romney in play. We suspect the problem isn’t that complicated: Simply put, political reporters still don’t consider evangelical leaders part of the regular beat, and so they’re the last to hear the news.