Haley Barbour: 'I'm Very Comfortable With [Romney's] Religion'

TAMPA, Fla. -- You could almost see the televangelists prancing in front of Haley Barbour's eyes.

Ben Smith of BuzzFeed asked the former Mississippi governor at a briefing on Monday how he felt about the idea that Mitt Romney might start talking about his Mormon faith more often.

Barbour, who considered a run for president this cycle, gave a fascinating answer that had one of the best lines of the day.

"I'm a born again evangelical Christian, but I don't go out and talk about it all the time. So it doesn't surprise me that you have somebody who's very religious and has done great service to his church, physical service –- physical service -– given a lot of his life, and his life's work, but doesn't like to wear it on his sleeve. My momma used to say if you see a fella walking down the street with a Bible in one hand you better watch out for what he got in the other hand. And maybe that's the way we Southerners are, or some of us. So maybe I'm not the right one to say, but I'm very comfortable with his religion and his religiosity, the fact that he is personally religious without him having to talk about it, because again I have a little bit of historic skepticism as I described about people who do that too much."