Mitt can't

A lot of people think Romney better address the "Mormon question", and soon, if he wants to win. They talk abut JFK's 1960 speech, in which he quieted voters' fears about his at-the-time politically exotic religion.

But there is no way Romney can quell Republican worries with a similar speech. Too much has changed... Does anybody think that Republican voters who are concerned about his religion want to hear anything that even resembles this?

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.

No?

Me either.

For some more thought on this, check out Steve Benen's post at TPM:

Nearly a half-century after JFK's speech in Houston, many of today's conservatives, particularly those in the GOP's religious right base, abhor the very idea of church-state separation. It's not usual to hear figures like James Dobson and Pat Robertson reject the constitutional principle's very existence.