The 'M' Word

When is a test of faith not a test of faith? When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney takes it.

In this morning's "Faith In America" speech, Romney was supposed to be allaying fears with Evangelicals that Mormons weren't Christian. Invoking Jack Kennedy not by name but as "another candidate from Massachusetts," he tried to remove his Mormonism from the debate while still proving he was Christian enough for government work.

"We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word," said Romney. Which is exactly how he had to put it, because then he might have to deal with that pesky problem of why they didn't similarly 'acknowledge' the matter in the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or the Presidential Oath of Office.

In an act of conflation, in one breath he went from talking about the Founders to saying "We are a nation 'Under God,'" then straight back to the Founders. As if it was they, and not the Knights of Columbus in 1954, who added it to the Pledge of Allegiance. He also dodged talking about what exactly a Enlightenment-era political theorist would read into the passage "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," as included in the Declaration of Independence.

Instead, he sneaked in a swinging attack against "the religion of secularism," because if it's one thing everyone can agree on it's those darned athieisticalites. After that, he blew any remaining pro-choice credibility by calling "the right to life itself" one of the "great moral principles that urge us all on a common course."

There was, however, a reach-out to Jews and moderate Muslims, who he described as equal victims of "radical Islamists" in their "violent Jihad." Of course, the nation's polytheists are probably having a long, hard look at the monotheist implications of "Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me."