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Forget JFK, Romney aims higher

12.08.07 -- 2:41PM
By Steve Benen

This week, it was hard to miss comparisons between Mitt Romney's speech on religion in America and JFK's historic 1960 speech on his support for church-state separation. Both speeches came from candidates facing discrimination, both were in Texas, and there was at least one picture of Romney striking a Kennedy-esque pose.

Apparently, though, the political world has been drawing on the wrong historical analogy, at least as far as Romney's wife is concerned.

Ann Romney believes her husband's speech on religion Thursday will go down in history, and in Las Vegas on Thursday night, she found many people who agreed with her.

"People were saying, 'It was like George Washington,' 'It was the Gettysburg Address,' " she said in an interview just after working a room of about 120 audience members, mostly women, at a restaurant in the JW Marriott in Summerlin.

"I mean, it was unbelievable, the response I heard from the people in there that heard it today. Almost everyone said they were moved to tears" by the speech, she said.

Really? Quick quiz: name one memorable line from the speech. I watched/listened to it intently, and 48 hours later, the only quote that stands out is the bizarre assertion that "freedom requires religion." This is a) wrong; and b) hardly the stuff of the Gettysburg Address.

Let's hope Ann Romney wasn't speaking on behalf of the campaign on this one.

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