This has gone far, far, far off the rails. This has gone far, far, far off the rails. Romney's simply insulting people at this point. laying claim to higher knowledge, greater truth. "I'm not sure we fully appreciate the profound implications of our history of religious freedom," he says. Then he goes on to categorize those who don't realize it as believers in hollow state religion, like the Europeans, or violent jihad, like the Muslims. My early read of the speech was that is was about setting secularists up against the religious. But, at least so far, it's been about setting up "believers in religious freedom" against "people who don't think Mitt Romney should be president." Seems like a bad idea. Obviously, a speech like this will be largely experienced through soundbites, and maybe the press will pick out some that show Romney is a favorable light. But watching it, the whole thing struck me as a debacle, and deeply diminished my belief in Romney's political talents. Meanwhile, the press is analyzing it mainly in terms of whether it made Romney look like less of a panderer, or more of a panderer. No one has called it a JFK moment. --Ezra Klein
