Tim Murphy: The Republican Field on Martin Luther King: It's Complicated

Tim Murphy is a reporter at Mother Jones

On Monday, the five remaining GOP presidential candidates will celebrate Martin Luther King Day by gathering in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and debating Rick Santorum's thoughts about Mitt Romney's response to Newt Gingrich's condemntation of Newt Gingrich's super-PAC's attack on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital. Or something like that. The timing of the Fox News debate hasn't been lost on folks like South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootlian, who suggested on Thursday it showed a lack of regard for the life of the Civil Rights icon.

The other, probably more plausible explanation is that, with the primary scheduled for Saturday, Monday was just an obvious date to hold the first of two debates. But it does raise the question—one that could come up in some iteration during the debate: How do the GOP candidates feel about Dr. King and his civil rights legacy? Here's a quick guide:

...In 2007, [Mitt Romney] told an audience in College Station, Texas, "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King." But as David Bernstein reported, that wasn't quite right. There was no evidence of Romney’s father, George, marching with MLK at Grosse Pointe, Michigan, as the campaign had claimed; for one thing, MLK had never been to Grosse Pointe. The campaign later clarified that George Romney and MLK had marched together in a metaphorical sense—they were in different cities, and the marches took place on different days—and that Mitt (who was not present for either event) had seen his father march in a metaphorical sense as well. Romney’s justice advisory committee includes failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, who has written that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 established "a principle of unsurpassed ugliness."