If you're a Republican presidential candidate and you're a Mormon, and let's say for argument's sake that your name is something wacky and slightly effete, like maybe "Mitt," you might find yourself having to overcome the nation's not-yet-fully-formed questions about the nature of your religion. For a Republican primary candidate, that can be a sore spot.

So rather than address the problem directly, and open yourself, your candidacy and your religion up to some uncomfortable questioning, here's what you can do: freak everybody out with other stuff.

You may already have heard that Romulan Remulak Romney named L. Ron Hubbard's (yes, Scientology's L. Ron Hubbard -- way to throw 'em of the crazy scent there, Mitt!) Battlefield Earth as his favorite novel.

But when I asked the other day, "What *&%$@#ing planet is Mitt Romney from?" I didn't realize there was an actual answer out there. Romney, you'll recall, had made this crackpot claim:

"In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

Ana Marie Cox at Swampland locates the planet:

Via The Plank, where they note that the whole seven-year-contract with option to renew is, in fact, a plot point in a novel by fellow Mormon Orson Scott Card.*

*UPDATE: Card's book with the seven-year marriage contracts? It's called "The Memory of Earth," and it is a fictionalization of the Book of Mormon set in outer space.

Go GOP!

