I've been on the road for a couple of days, but I want to circle back to Mitt Romney's appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday to make two points.

First, I think Romney made a significant mistake by refusing to acknowledge that his church was wrong to discriminate against blacks up until 1978. This should have been a no-brainer, and his refusal to state the obvious was made even more pronounced by citing his father's record of marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, his mother's civil rights record, etc. - all of which was a tacit admission that the church's policy of discrimination was wrong. So why not just say so?

Byron York suggests Romney is disinclined to answer the question because of the revelatory nature of LDS policy: "if a church says it is led by revelation, and then says it was wrong, it's kind of like saying God was wrong."

But, Romney's misty-eyed recollection on Meet the Press notwithstanding, the simple question remains, and it isn't going away any time soon, especially if Romney wins the Republican nomination: was the Mormon church's policy toward blacks wrong prior to 1978? Romney's continued refusal to answer the question directly will be interpreted as an answer in and of itself - one that may prove to be quite damaging.

The second point concerns Romney's position on abortion. On Meet the Press, Romney characterized the reasoning behind his effectively pro-choice position this way: "And the question for me was, what is the role of government? And it was quite theoretical and, and philosophical to consider what the role of government should be in this regard." Romney then explained his conversion saying that when a bill relating to life came to his desk as governor, "the theoretical became reality, if you will."

The problem, such as exists for Romney, is that in the 1994 clip Tim Russert played directly preceding these comments, Romney explained his pro-choice position by citing the story of a "dear close family relative...who passed away from an illegal abortion." Far from being "theoretical" or "philosophical," then, Romney's pro-choice position on abortion was derived from a very real and personal experience.