Yeah, the "reality-based community" thing has been making the rounds since at least '04. Shouldn't exactly be a surprise; it's magical-thinking "Never tell me the odds!" stuff that's been at the heart of the neocons' strategizing from day one.
I'd say most of them buy into it because they literally believe that God is on their side; given Rove's disdain for the religious base I suspect his thinking is a more-secular "History is moved by great men" kind of thinking.
Mitt Romney [...] adheres to a religion that makes Scientology look sensible
I have my serious issues with the LDS but the truth is that their own flavor of psychotic cult mentality isn't too different from the one practiced by Southern Baptists and... well, every major religion since the Phoenicians, really. It only feels more shocking because it tends to come out suddenly and fiercely from people who up to that point seemed fairly sensible, tolerant and even a bit altruistic. This is COMPLETELY BY DESIGN but it's still not that different than the frothing fundamentalist on 88.9 FM, it just tends to come around and clock you in the back of the head instead of being obvious after about 10 seconds of listening to the person.
Scientologists, by contrast, are literally on drugs, and will actually murder anyone who tries to get out.
Indeed. Tangentially, I find them fascinating as two points on the same curve from religion moving from the supernatural to the science fictional as our understanding of science has improved over the centuries. From a strictly doctrinary point-of-view you could argue that "Jesus lives in America and God has his own planet" are as wacky as "Xenu dropped H-bombs in volcanoes", but as Colbert once put it, "Now if they threw in a burning bush or a virgin birth, THAT would make sense."
But leaving aside doctrine and focusing on actual behavior, well, there's plenty of troubling stuff coming out of LDS -- rabidly anti-gay, with the spectre of institutionalized racism hanging over it -- but, well, is there a major religion in America that that DOESN'T apply to? Scientology, OTOH, has a more overt history of brainwashing (and let's please avoid the "all religion is brainwashing" argument; I'm talking about actual sleep and food deprivation and the like), and is particularly aggressive against its critics. And as you say, there are some pretty horrifying cases of sick people trying to leave the church so they could get medical care, being refused, and dying.
All of which is rather off-topic. When it comes right down to it I think the evangelical resistance to Mormonism is a big part of why Romney keeps facing the challenger-du-jour, but once (if?) he gets the nom the base will fall in line behind him, just like it did for McCain.
It's even funnier/worse because if you twist your head a bit, you can almost see the worldview as maybe-Rove does. And then you (hopefully) give your head a shake and escape before it's too late.
And that in and of itself bears a 1984 comparison. The single most terrifying thing about 1984 is that everything O'Brien says is true -- from a certain perspective.