I agree with David Brooks on this one more than I agree with you.

Romney stood up in Houston and said, effectively, my faith doesn’t matter because I’m just the same as you are; “[I] share these American values: the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty.”

When JFK went down to Houston, his message was that the concerns that he’d be the puppet of the Vatican were senseless: “I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me.” See here for the speech and here for the Q&A which followed.

Brooks was on the money to criticize Romney for papering over the theological differences that exist in American society. Romney spoke of “the great moral inheritance we hold in common” in the American experience of “In God We Trust.” He squished the decades of vigorous schism-causing debates within the American churches into “the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself” about which he said “no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.” Maybe. In the end. But opposition to that conscience among religious and areligious people can allow certain amoral peculiar institutions to last for dreadful years and years.

JFK also defended the strength of the individual conscience more strongly than Romney did. JFK framed his independence in political matters from his church through his own resistance to pressure should his religious superior call him up to say, ‘JFK, vote this way.’ Romney simply said ‘the phone’s not ringing; my religious superior isn’t calling.’ — Compare —

ROMNEY: “Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.”

JFK-speech: “But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do likewise.”

JFK-q&a: “May I just say that as I do not accept the right of any, as I said, ecclesiastical official, to tell me what I shall do in the sphere of my public responsibility as an elected official…”

Also, Romney was steadfast in his opposition to answering questions about his church’s doctrines. JFK took such questions openly, after he’d earlier referenced the circulation of out-of-context quotations from Catholic leaders and religious materials. JFK spoke as though he realized that many who saw such out-of-context quotations would find them strange and foreign. So he answered the questions with his beliefs as they were relevant to his role as a public official, repeating that he was unqualified to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church. Romney won’t talk about the LDS Church, but the rumors about Mormon doctrine on YouTube are weird and getting weirder. If that remains the primary source of ‘information’ in the eyes of voters, his refusal to explain doctrines from a layman’s perspective might just sink him. Give people a chance to listen respectively. — Compare –

ROMNEY: “There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.”

JFK-q&a: There’s too much to quote, but see the interchange with B.E. Howard, Minister of the Church of Christ, in which the minister quotes from a compendium of Catholic teaching and from the then-current Pope John XIII; and in which Robert McLaren of Westminister Presbyterian Church quotes from the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Leo IX. JFK answers the questions in a spirit of proving the absence of a religious test for office.

I am comfortable with Romney’s religion. I am not comfortable with Romney’s liberal past.

And I get the odd sense that the speech was given in order for me to be more comfortable with his flip/flops. In a way I think he feels like he is the victim of religious bigotry.
So he is setting the meme for an excuse if he loses. He can’t believe he is losing to someone like Huckabee. So it has to be the religion thing.
I am not falling for it.

And the NH push-poll results will most likely come next week! I can’t wait.