Over the weekend, I like a lot of other bloggers, mused over Mitt Romney's surprising 2nd place finish.

An article in the Tennessean pointed out that this wasn't entirely spontaneous. A very well organized (albeit on short notice) effort by Tennesseans for Mitt managed to get a sizeable contingent to the SRLC and put Romney in a solid second place position.

Romney's supporters got a late start.

"We started putting this together about three weeks ago," said David French, 37, a lawyer in Columbia, Tenn., who with his wife, Nancy, created www.tnformitt.com.

Their supporters had ballcaps, T-shirts, stickers and other paraphernalia that said "Romney" with the "o" filled in with the Tennessee flag's three stars.

Nearly all of Romney's votes came from their group, who picture him as the alternative to McCain for evangelical Christians, French said. Romney supporters in Tennessee helped pay the way for more than 50 college students, said Dawn Meling of Pennsylvania, a recent college graduate and Romney supporter.

"Frist is a good man, a good senator, but Gov. Romney is a better leader to be the president of the United States," French said.

Redstate notes the article and inferred that Romney was pulling a fast one.

Ah, ha! So it seems the surprise Romney showing wasn't as spontaneous as it seemed. Bad, Mitt, Bad!

It was concerted on MY part. I am not Mormon and am not associated with Romney in any way. I just noticed him in 1994 when he ran against Kennedy and almost won. He's amazing. This was a total grassroots effort, and I was totally unprepared by his placement as second.

I take two things away from the French's effort:

What the Frenchs did wasn't "netroots" or anything high-tech. It was person-to-person persuasion and pen-and-paper organizing. Word of mouth is still the best way to sell just about anything.

The knock on Romney was always his religion. Pundits everywhere wondered whether Evangelicals and Mormons would place nice. Nancy tells me that her group was a mix of Church of Christ, Pentacostals and Mormons. Nancy isn't Mormon herself.

Mormons had no trouble voting for an Evangelical in the form of George W. Bush, and it appears that Evangelicals are not going to have any trouble voting for a Mormon if he otherwise floats their political boat.

I have long felt this was the case, but like everyone else, I had no empirical proof. Now we do. It shouldn't be surprising, since despite doctrinal differences, there is not a whole lot of difference in values between Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals.

If Romney is smart (and boy is he ever...), he'll move quickly to appropriate the church channels--a social network with no parallel in this country. Romney has a great advantage here--as a prominent faithful Mormon, his religious bona fides are, like Bush before him, already in place. Its that authenticity thing I keep talking about. He has a natural credibility among the faithful. Romney should be talking to pastors all over the country and spend Sundays in whatever local (LDS) ward comes handy.