Romney to Deliver Key Address on Faith

Mitt Romney last night moved to dampen suspicion among Republican voters about his Mormon beliefs and recapture his frontrunner status for the party's nomination by announcing he will deliver an address on faith and American society.

The announcement, made only hours after a new poll showed the Baptist minister, Mike Huckabee, leaping past Romney to first place in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on January 3, was seen as an attempt to draw parallels with the late John F Kennedy.

In the 1960 elections, Kennedy, America's first and only Catholic president, made a now legendary address about the separation of church and state to assure voters that his faith would have no influence over decisions made in the White House. Mr Romney's speech, scheduled for Thursday, was designed for maximum effect. Romney will appear at the presidential library of the first George Bush in College Station, Texas and will be introduced by the former president.

The campaign said last night that Bush technically will not be endorsing Romney but the show of support was unmistakable.

"This speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition that religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor's own faith would inform his presidency if he were elected," a statement from Romney's campaign said last night.

"Governor Romney understands that faith is an important issue to many Americans, and he personally feels this moment is the right moment for him to share his views with the nation."

The question of religion has loomed large over Romney's campaign since the outset - although the former governor of Massachusetts has resisted discussion of his faith. The question of belief was highlighted again during last week's Republican debate in Florida when an evidently rattled Romney refused to say - unlike two of the other frontrunners, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee - whether he believed every word in the Bible was a literal truth. He did not mention his faith's text, the Book of Mormon.

Until last night, however, Romney's campaign refused to commit to an address on religion, despite calls from conservative commentators and some evangelical leaders for him to explain whether his faith will influence his decisions as president.

The campaign statement said the decision was made last week, but the announcement was conveniently timed to distract from a poll from early yesterday that showed Romney losing ground in Iowa to Huckabee - despite spending $5 million on television ads and holding nearly 400 events in the state.

In a poll in the Des Moines Register of likely Republican caucus goers, Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former governor of Arkansas who spent less than $350,000 in the state to Romney's millions, had gained 17 points in the last two months and had 29% of the vote. Romney, despite pouring time and money into his Iowa organisation, was reduced to second place with 24%. Giuliani came in third with 13%.

The poll forecast upsets on the Democratic side as well, with Hillary Clinton losing her frontrunner status to Barack Obama. More ominously for Clinton, she lost ground among the women voters who previously were the core of her support.

For Romney, the threat from Huckabee comes in his appeal to evangelicals as a former minister, as well as his folksy charm, which masks extremely conservative views on abortion and taxation policy.

His campaign hopes Thursday's speech will reverse the drift to Huckabee by doing for Romney what Kennedy's speech did nearly half a century ago. In an address to southern Baptist leaders in Texas, Kennedy famously declared: "I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic party's candidate for president who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me."