Mitt Romney Will Address Mormon Religion “Issue”

It’s an issue that has lurked in the background.

An issue some insisted isn’t an issue.

But it is enough of an issue that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is getting ready to talk about his religion — having to go down a path that John F. Kennedy felt he had to go down when he ran for President 47 years ago.

Now, just one month from the first contest of the 2008 presidential election campaign, with Romney’s apparent advantage in first-caucusing Iowa slipping to a Southern Baptist pastor from Arkansas, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Romney plans to address the issue that is troubling many of his party’s most conservative, religious voters. His Mormonism.

This is in a sense long overdue. The buzz about religion as an issue few will want to admit is REALLY an issue has been out there for some time. Clearly, not addressing it head-on and with specificity doesn’t address the fact that in American life there still seem to be groups about which it is not politically incorrect to be a bigot.

The venue of Romney’s planned address on religion will be cause for gossip of its own: At the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas., with an introduction promised by the 41st president. The former president’s son, Jeb, already has steered most of his closest advisers, strategists and supporters to Romney’s campaign, while President Bush has remained neutral in his party’s nominating contest.

So Romney is the Jeb Bush wing of the GOP’s favorite candidate. Will some say it’s an endorsement by the Bushies? Yep:

The campaign says tonight that no endorsement should be read into the venue. But the mere stage for Thursday’s speech by Romney, confronting a question that could be central to his bid for the GOP’s presidential nomination, is likely to stir speculation about the Bush clan’s backing.

Romney’s address will be called “Faith in America,” his campaign announced this evening.

With polls showing that four in 10 of all likely Republican voters consider themselves Christian conservatives, polling also shows that one quarter of all evangelical Christians voice doubts about voting for a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Just last month, at a convention in Billings, Montana, I had a talk with an entertainer who is Mormon. He was surprised to hear me say: “If Mitt Romney was not Mormon, he would be a shoo in for the Republican nomination.” He was surprised because he and some Mormons feel that way — and they are perhaps correct.

True, Romney has changed or finessed his positions often — but that is not unheard of in politics. He is the most telegenic of all candidates: he LOOKS Presidential. He is a slick speaker. And, if ideological purity isn’t the issue but getting things done is, he has proven to be a doer.

Now, this doer is on the rocks.

In the past month, the one ordained Southern Baptist minister in the race, Huckabee, a former Christian broadcaster as well, has gained new momentum in his bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, challenging Romney in a state where the former governor of Massachusetts had won the Iowa Republican Party’s straw poll last summer.

This week’s speech could be the defining moment of Romney’s campaign for president. It is, in many ways, decades later, the same speech that Kennedy delivered in Houston, in 1960.

EDITOR’s NOTE: “Defining moment” is a journalist cliche as puke-inducing now as “he tried to change the subject.” “He “tried to change the subject” is usually used by the media to suggest that a candidate who won’t talk about what the media wants to talk about (The Flavor Of The Story) is somehow trying to avoid talking about something, rather than simply discussing another issue.

But in this case it is correct.

Romney has to deal with this issue head-on because the trending indicates that otherwise his candidacy is not going to flower. There IS anti-Mormon bigotry out there (as well as many voters who simply don’t like him).

ALSO OF INTEREST:

–Time to Channel JFK

–Why a Mormon Speech?

Will ‘Pulling a JFK’ Be Enough for Romney?