I came across the following sentence while readingProfiles in Courage:

“He was, moreover, a brilliant political analyst, who knew that during his lifetime the number of American voters who agreed with the fundamental tenents of his political philosophy was destined to be a permanent minority . . .”(p. 212)

I have several questions about the phrase “fundamental tenents.”
First of all, I couldn’t possibly be the first person to notice that the author used a misspelling of “tenant” instead of the word he intended, “tenet,” could I? JFK and his editors couldn’t have missed this error, could they? So maybe this mistake is just a misprint in my edition of the book?
According to the definitions given over at Language Log, is this an eggcorn or a malapropism? I tend to think that it’s a genuine eggcorn since the two words “tenet” and “tenant” sound about the same when pronounced aloud.
Finally, do these two words have a similar origin? I doubt it, but I’ll have to check my dictionary and get back to you.

I did check Google and got 628 hits for “fundamental tenants,” 110 hits for “fundamental tenents,” and 19,800 hits for the phrase “fundamental tenets.”