Political half-gainer

After ridiculing yet another of the myriad rationalizations he exposes in his 2010 memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens states unequivocally on p. 379: "I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind."
    The statement could be this blogger's motto, called upon as I am, in my own small, self-respecting way, to expose religious absurditities and theological half-gainers.
    During the Republican presidential primary debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney responded to comments about his religion's being a cult. He is reported by The Washington Post ("Mitt Romney takes on Mormon ‘cult’ comments, takes fire from GOP rivals") to have said: "That idea that we should choose people based on their religion is the one that I find to be most troubling."
    Rick Perry was one of the rivals present. He's the governor of Texas. Article 1, Section 4 of the Texas state constitution states that

No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments....

    Pretty good, eh? You might not have thought that one of Romney's opponents had such a convenient rug for Romney to pull out from under him.
    Oh, but wait. The passage from the Texas state constitution specifies a provision:

No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being [emphasis mine]¹.

    Hey, come on, Rick, Mitt passes that test.

The trouble here, of course, really is that business about acknowledging the existence of a Supreme Being (a Supreme Being?—aren't we monotheists, here in America?). You do pretty much have to do that to be electable to higher political office anywhere in America, and not just in Texas.
    Or at least you have to not deny it—if you can avoid being asked where you stand in the first place. But what are the chances of that in an American political campaign?
    We have every reason to doubt that Romney's self-serving response doesn't mean that if he were to be chosen, he would oppose "the idea that we should choose people based on their being religious."
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1. I didn't find this passage myself. A skeptical reader questioned one of my Christopher Hitchens quotes yesterday and did some fact-checking. Hitchens had said, "[Texas has] laws, I think, that if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ you can’t run for sheriff." My skeptical reader reported that "The Hitchens quote is very close to the truth."