If I were Mitt Romney

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

This episode is a partial and edited transcript of the November 17, 2007 of the Richard Land LIVE! radio broadcast.

If I were Romney, I would go to a major evangelical university or a major Catholic university, like Boston College or Notre Dame. I would give a speech in which I would say:

---

“The issue of my religious faith has been a significant one in this campaign. I have re-read with great interest John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of 1960.

“He made a plea for religious tolerance and pointed out that [while] it was a Catholic that was being accused of not being qualified to be president in 1960,

“in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist.”

“I think it’s important for people to understand this, and to understand that what’s at stake here is whether or not we have a religious test for office. Paraphrasing Kennedy: I am not the Mormon candidate for president. I hope to be the Republican Party’s candidate for president. I do not speak for my faith on religious matters and they do not speak for me on public policy matters.

“As Senator Kennedy said,

“Whatever issue may come before me as President…I will make my decision…in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. If the time should ever come…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 the same.”

“Let me be clear, however, that as JFK said in 1960, I do not intend “to disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.” And, I might add, it would be both un-American and unconstitutional to ask me to do so.

“I do not intend to discuss my religious beliefs in this campaign. My relationship with God is personal and private and I ask that that personal and private and Constitutionally-protected space be respected. I ask that you, the American people, judge me based on my record as a public servant and Governor of a great state, that Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“While serving as Governor, followers of my faith received no special consideration or favor from me. I evaluated people on their record and their performance not their religion, which would have been both illegal and immoral. That is how I ask you to judge me.

“Evaluate me on my character as a husband, a father, a businessman, and a citizen and a public servant. Judge me on my public positions—on the issues that face our great nation—not on my personal faith.

“As John F. Kennedy said in that famous 1960 speech in Houston, I too,

“believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end—where all men and all churches are treated as equal—where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice—where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind—and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. “That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe—a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

---

If [Romney] did that, when the press asked him about the specific beliefs of Mormonism he could then say,

“I have said I am not going to talk about my personal faith on the campaign. I’m running for president, not pastor, not theologian. Talk to my church if you want to know what my church believes on these issues. I would ask you to evaluate me on my record. It’s clear that the constitution says there is no religious tests for office and I think the American people would resent the media trying to impose one.”