Weekend Bulletin: The Speech Is Coming – “Faith In America” (UPDATED) | Article VI Blog

We just received the following release from the Romney campaign. We’ll have more on this as it develops, of course.

Statement from Kevin Madden, Romney for President campaign spokesman:

“Governor Romney has made a decision to deliver a speech titled ‘Faith in America.’
“The governor has been invited to The George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas to deliver this address on Thursday, December 6.

“This speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor’s own faith would inform his Presidency if he were elected.

“Governor Romney understands that faith is an important issue to many Americans, and he personally feels this moment is the right moment for him to share his views with the nation.”

“Governor Romney personally made the decision to deliver this speech sometime last week.

“While identifying a venue for this address, the campaign consulted with President George H.W. Bush’s office last week about Governor Romney’s decision. President Bush was gracious enough to extend an invitation to deliver the speech at the presidential library.

“The invitation to speak at the presidential library is not an endorsement of Governor Romney’s campaign.

-Kevin Madden, Romney for President campaign spokesman

John comments: Lowell found this post from Yuval Levin on the Corner:

Among other things, the decision to do this suggests the Romney team is finding what a couple of other Republican campaigns have hinted at about the fine details of their Iowa polling: that Romney’s slip in Iowa, and Huckabee’s rise, has to do with an implicit but very real unease about his Mormonism among evangelical protestants who might otherwise be inclined to support him.

I think there is little doubt that this decision has been determined to be a political necessity because of Huckabee’s very slick playing of the religion card – something we have documented here thoroughly. I also think the use of the Bush Library for this purpose, while not an endorsement of Romney, is a message from the senior Republican Statesman around today that this should NOT be an issue.

Given the title of the speech this is going to be nothing like the Kennedy speech. Undoubtedly this is going to be heavy on history, the constitution, and tradition in our great nation. I hope Romney will continue to talk little about Mormonism and much about what has made America great. He must rise above this, not be mired in it.

We were saving George Will’s blistering of Huckabee until tomorrow’s Reading List, but what he had to say is just too apropos the moment:

If Huckabee succeeds in derailing Romney’s campaign by raising a religious test for presidential eligibility, that will be clarifying: In one particular, America was more enlightened a century ago.

My initial reaction to this news is simply disappointment in my Evangelical brethren. That we have forced Romney into this is shameful. What lies in the future for us is not pretty. We are supposed to be smarter.

Lowell adds: I am more philosophical about this, and think maybe it’s just as well that The Question gets out — way out– in the open. To my mind, Romney is searching for a political antidote to an especially poisonous “witches’ brew.” The ingredients of the brew:

Ignorance of Mormonism, and resulting distrust or suspicion of Romney by people who generally lack malice;
Distrust of Mormonism by others with serious theological differences who believe such differences actually have something to do with choosing a presidential candidate;
The belief (held by many who are also in category no. 2) that Mormonism is a serious menace to society and to the eternal salvation of mankind, and that electing a Mormon president would only serve to legitimize that menace;
Outright bigotry by those who really hate Mormonism, either from religious conservatives who see the faith as an all-too-successful competitors for parishioners, or left-wing bigots like Jacob Weisberg who dispute any belief in the miraculous;
Last, but perhaps most important in this context, politicians and their consultants (Huckabee for now, certainly Clinton in the general election, if Romney is nominated), who see an opening here and are exploiting it. This category is the most disgusting of them all.

What can The Speech do to neutralize this deadly potion? One paragraph from Hugh Hewitt’s “A Mormon in the White House” comes repeatedly to mind:

“This vision of [Mormonism as a] ‘cult’ is difficult to square with the sunny Mormons one encounters at Boy Scout jamborees, on city councils across the land, or in the professions and business. But for those who do not know any Mormons, or at least not that well, this background music dominates the attitude they bring to the idea of a Mormon candidate for the presidency … [W]hat Romney confronts is the widespread attachment of the term “cult” to his religious beliefs. This is a political problem of the first order.”

As I’ve said before, if Romney can somehow, through The Speech, convey to people that essence of “sunny Mormons,” the Boy Scouts, the big, happy families that exude wholesomeness, the people who rush hurricane relief to strangers, his “Mormon problem” will fade.

I hate to simplify the problem that much, but I think that’s the key. If he can get people to see him, his wife Ann, his five sons, and his lifestyle as genuine– in short, if he can make people feel all right about him, he’ll put this nonsense behind him.

But if he can’t pull that off, then a perfectly qualified candidate for president will have been put out of the presidential race because of his religion. As K-Lo says,

[I]f you are not going to support Mitt Romney for president because he is Mormon, or because you think he will not be elected president because he is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, say your prayers for America.

Amen.

UPDATES:

Jonathon Martin reports – The NYTimes exagerates.

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