Romney, the former leader of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and by far the favorite presidential pick of Utahns, has been considering giving the so-called "JFK speech" for some time, although his campaign has been split over whether it's a good idea.

Land, who has publicly urged Romney to deliver a similar speech, said he gave Romney a copy of the JFK speech in October 2006. He also came up with Romney's oft-quoted statement, "We're not voting for a pastor-in-chief, we're voting for a commander-in-chief."

A Houston native, Land remembers going to church after the Kennedy speech as a 13-year-old and hearing his family's Baptist minister declare that it would be acceptable for the congregation to vote for a Catholic.

Land, who'll be part of Romney's invited audience, said he talked recently to a former Kennedy adviser who was at the Houston speech in 1960. "He said, 'We were on pins and needles because clearly it was a hostile crowd. We didn't know if it would work or not."'

Texas was a good pick for both Kennedy and Romney, Wilson said. "Texas is firmly in the Bible Belt," he said, describing the state as straddling the GOP's strongholds in the West and the South.

And, Wilson said, the state is not just conservative, it's overwhelmingly evangelical Protestant. "If you're going to make this kind of speech, you're going to have to go into the lion's den."

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