Recognition of Wide-Spread Prejudice Against Mormons

I watched the Iowa caucus coverage on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer with my wife's family while we were visiting for the holidays. We were all pretty surprised by an answer by Stuart Rothenberg, one of the commentators, to a question about the effect of Romney being a Mormon. Here's part of the transcript (link, emph. added):

MARGARET WARNER: But back in the early fall, also, everyone was talking about the Mormon factor, that the evangelical Christians didn't entirely trust Romney, being a Mormon. Do you think that was a factor?

STUART ROTHENBERG: Oh, I think it was a huge factor. And it's not so much that they didn't trust him. They were uncomfortable with elevating a Mormon to the presidency and giving that legitimacy.

But I think that was a huge factor, Margaret. There were whole chunks of conservatives who couldn't buy into Romney, and were uncomfortable with Giuliani and McCain, and when Thompson ran it didn't look like very much, and so Huckabee became the default candidate. There was a vacancy there, and he just moved into it.

It just blew us away that someone would be so straight-forward in recognizing the anti-Mormon bias that exists in this country. I did a search for "Stuart Rothenberg Mormon" and turned up a recent article he wrote that explains his ideas as to why evangelicals are so anti-Mormon (link). My summarization of his thesis is that evangelicals are afraid of legitimizing our faith because they don't see it just as a faith but as an organization with the purpose of "wooing evangelicals or potential adherents away from Christianity."