Besides a bushel of Bushes, immigration enthusiast money, the GOP hierachy etc. etc., Chris Cannon's primary challenger apparently faced an even more formidable opponent: God. Ot at least the leadership of the Mormon Church. The Salt Lake City Tribune's Robert Gehrke reports that, in an unusual step, church leaders issued a statement urging the faithful to vote in the primary. An increased turnout is generally presumed to help the incumbent. (LDS letter may have helped Cannon, June 30 2006.)

The LDS statement came at the behest of Joe Cannon, chairman of the Utah GOP and Chris Cannon's brother. In his excellent article, Gehrke reports that Joe Cannon is already under fire for his lack of neutrality in the race.

All of which bears out Patrick Cleburne's comment after the primary: "How strange it is that Mormonism, that most American of religions, might well be causative in the Nation's fall."

So it took heaven and hell (or at any rate Karl Rove's White House) to save Chris Cannon this time. What will it take next time? Do other GOP incumbents really want this problem?