What Was I Thinking? 
Mitt Romney’s Must See Thursday has generated acres of ink.
A passing mention in an opinion piece on the build up recalls an earlier Mormon candidate, Mo Udall, and how he was done in by the sainted Jimmy Carter.
“Religion is neither a qualifier nor a disqualifier for public office, unless you are a Mormon, one of your opponents is a Southern Baptist and you are both running for the presidential nomination of your party…When former governor Jimmy Carter was in tight race with Congressman Morris “Mo” Udall for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1976, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, a Carter backer, said to a large audience of black Baptist ministers: “I’m asking you to make a choice between a man from Georgia who fights to let you in his church, and a man from Arizona whose church won’t even let you in the back door.”…Udall, who had left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over its policies toward blacks, called on Carter, a Southern Baptist layman, to repudiate Coleman’s comments. Carter refused and won the Michigan primary.”
Glorious days of old! Carter, the man who split the vote and got Lester Maddox in as Georgia Governor, paired with a man who was at least friendly with the Stalinists to slander one of the more decent politicians Arizona ever produced. 
Greeting Previous Mormon Candidate
Let’s see what he says, who’s in the audience and if he takes questions. Until then the breathless “Mitt’s Kennedy Moment” stories are kinda beside the point. 
Kennedy spoke to the Baptist beast, Mitt faces the angry throngs of the Bush Library. And Kennedy took multiple questions from the assembled clergy after his speech.
That Bush-Reagan Thing
“…he wasn’t a part of that Bush-Reagan thing, I was a part of that Bush-Reagan thing”
With these bold if inarticulate words, Mike Huckabee affirms his Reagan Correctness and threw down the gauntlet to would-be Reagan lover Mitt Romney.
Romney wrapped himself in Reagan’s banner and responded with his own interesting read on history:
“Ronald Reagan would have never raised taxes like Mike Huckabee did, Ronald Reagan would have never said let’s give tuition breaks to illegals like Mike Huckabee did, Ronald Reagan would have never stood by and pushed for a budget that more than doubled during his term as president.”
We can’t know what the deceased former President might do with contemporary questions, but we certainly know he raised taxes and amnestied immigrants.
Every jot and tickle of drama surrounding access to Hillary Clinton’s papers gets extensive play in right wing blogs, generally along the lines of “I wonder what she’s hiding” or “Hmmm.”
We can now watch with interest the reaction to the Chicago Tribune’s blow by blow of the ever changing status of Rudy Giuliani’s papers.
After his failed attempt to extend his term in mayor’s office by three months, Rudy’s thoughts apparently turned to History.
As his mayoralty entered it’s final days, the Giuliani appointed Records Department Commissioner signed an agreement transferring his administration’s papers to the Rudolph Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs. The Commissioner says he agreed to give away the papers because the municipal archives’ staff had been halved under Giuliaini:
“We went from 92 people in ’93 to 44 in 2001…That’s the largest percentage drop of any city department. The archives were overstressed.”
The agreement gave Giuliani veto over releasing papers: “”whenever Rudolph W. Giuliani has a personal interest or right in a document separate and apart from the interests and rights of the city, his approval shall be required before any such document may be released or disclosed by the center to the public.”
Protests , lawsuits, and City Council legislation turned this back, with Rudy eventually dropping the language and returning the papers. Or so he says.
The city’s records chief says he thinks he got them all, but “I couldn’t testify in court that every paper came back.” And New York historian Michael Wallace told the Tribune “There should always be an asterisk next to any citation of the Giuliani papers, saying … ‘The chain of public custody of these documents was broken…He had to be sued repeatedly to get him to disclose even the most inoffensive material …Somebody with that kind of track record, you don’t want to turn over to him the task of archiving his papers.”
At the time the agreement was signed the Rudy center was but a gleam in the incorporating attorney’s eyes. Even today it’s only existence is as files at Rudy’s corporate offices.
“I would love to see a President Huckabee because if our president were named ‘Huckabee,” how bad could anything really seem?… It’d be as if the entire country was animated by Hanna Barbera. Can you imagine the Huckabee Monument?” 
– Stephen Colbert
Glorious days of old! Carter, the man who split the vote and got Lester Maddox in as Georgia Governor, paired with a man who was at least friendly with the Stalinists to slander one of the more decent politicians Arizona ever produced. 
