Guest Post by Morbo
On Thursday, the Carpetbagger had a short item on Robert Novak’s recent column about Mitt Romney. Novak argues that Romney is getting clobbered over the Mormon issue on the campaign trail and urges him to address it in a major speech. Wrote Novak:
Although disagreement remains within the Romney camp, the consensus is that he must address the Mormon question with a speech deploring bias. According to campaign sources, a speech has been written, though much of it could still be changed. It hasn’t been determined when he will deliver a speech that could determine the 2008 political outcome.
This hypothetical Romney speech has been compared to a famous address John F. Kennedy delivered before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960. In this speech, Kennedy confronted questions about how his Catholic faith might affect his presidency and skillfully demolished the claims of his critics, who argued that Kennedy would let the Vatican run U.S. policy.
Kennedy’s talk was a plea for tolerance, but it was much more. Kennedy assured the Protestant ministers that they could trust him because, if elected, he would strongly support the separation of church and state. This pledge was the key to the speech’s success; it must not be overlooked. Kennedy said:
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”
Can you imagine Romney giving a speech like this with a straight face?
The guy has spent the past six months sucking up to the Religious Right and assuring them that, if elected, he will pursue their theocratic agenda with vigor. He’s vowed to impose someone’s religious agenda — so why not a Mormon one?
Romney’s sudden conversion to right-wingery has won over some Religious Right types. TV preacher Pat Robertson’s top attorney, Jay Sekulow, is a big Romney fan, and on Romney’s website you can see others who have climbed aboard the Romney “National Faith and Values Steering Committee.” But many on the Religious Right remain extremely wary of Romney’s Mormonism.
This puts Romney in a tough spot. If he even dared to use the phrase “separation of church and state” in a favorable manner in any speech, his little Religious Right buddies would go absolutely insane. They hate that phrase because the separation principle, properly implemented, prevents them from running everyone else’s lives.
So where does that leave Romney? He can give a whiney speech moaning that people are being mean to him over his religion and begging them to stop because it’s just not nice. This is unlikely to persuade the hard-core fundamentalist faction that believes his religion is a cult.
The man is boxed in, but I have no sympathy because he chose to crawl into the damn box. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.