” A Constantly Moving Target”: Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Speech Brings More Lies And Reversals In Positions
It would be laughable were it not so completely serious.
As I listened intently to Governor Romney’s foreign policy address delivered this morning at the Virginia Military Institute, I was sure I heard him say that President Obama had not signed so much as one free-trade agreement during the past three years.
The statement struck such a discordant note I pressed the rewind button to make sure I had heard the Governor correctly.
Sure enough, that’s what he said.
Apparently, the Romney campaign did not get the memo—or more likely chose to ignore the facts—that it was on October 23, 2011, not one year ago, when, in a rare moment of bi-partisanship, President Obama signed free-trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia.
Even the Republicans were happy about the event as Speaker of the House, John Boehner, issued a statement saying, “years of perseverance have been rewarded today as American job creators will have new opportunities to expand and hire as they access new markets abroad.”
Why would Romney say such a thing when it is so obviously disprovable?
If you have the answer to that question, maybe you can then tell me why Mr. Romney would also include in his address a bold statement of commitment to a two state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the important role he could play in bringing about the same, when we all heard him say precisely the opposite in the now infamous “47 percent” videotape of his speech at a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida.
In case you need a reminder, here is what Romney said in that conversation which was intended to be private—
“I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way. So what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem…and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
And yet, in today’s speech, Gov. Romney said—
“Finally, I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel. On this vital issue, the President has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new President will bring the chance to begin anew.”
Not only does Romney completely turn tail on what he expressed in private, he actually blames the President in today’s speech for failing at something Romney is on record as saying is an unsolvable problem.
And maybe someone can tell me why Governor Romney chose to excoriate President Obama for not getting sufficiently involved in the internal skirmishes taking place in various Middle-Eastern countries when Romney went on record, in an April 2011 op-ed he penned for the National Review, and accused the President of being too aggressive in Libya by committing what he called ‘mission creep’?
Of course, it is possible Governor Romney simply forgot his most recent position on Libya given the number of times he changed his stance on that conflict.
In what might be considered a precursor to the now familiar Romney proclivity for “evolving” his stance to reflect what he thinks will best sell at any given moment, the Governor went through such a remarkable evolution during our efforts to assist the Libyans free themselves of the Gadhafi regime.
As Jake Tapper lays out in his October 20, 2011 piece on Romney’s ever changing view of our involvement in Libya, Romney managed to work through three, distinct positions on the topic over a one month period. The first was expressed in March of 2011, when the Governor criticize the Obama administration for being weak and not getting involved more quickly.
The second Romney position was no position at all, illustrated when, just one month following his initial take, Romney failed to even mention Libya during a speech delivered to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas where the Governor criticized Obama’s Middle-East policy. Having strangely omitted to discuss Libya during that speech, reporters sought to get the Governor to respond to questions on the topic. The encounter was described by the Las Vegas Review Journal as follows: “Romney was silent on Libya, the newest and stickiest military and U.S. policy problem as the United States and its NATO allies enforce a no-fly zone to help rebels oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. After his speech, Romney refused to take questions from reporters about his position on Libya. Instead, he and his wife, Ann, fled down a hallway and escaped up an escalator at The Venetian, where the event was held. ‘I’ve got a lot of positions on a lot of topics, but walking down the hall probably isn’t the best place to describe all those,’ Romney said, deflecting a Libya query as he walked quickly with half a dozen journalists trailing him.”
Finally, in the April op-ed Romney posted at Nationalreview.com, as noted and linked above, Romney wrote that he had, indeed, supported President Obama’s “specific, limited mission” but went on to then criticize Obama for getting further involved in what Romney called “mission creep”.
So, in March, Romney deemed the American response to what was happening in Libya as weak only to evolve his message —just one month later—to one expressing initial support for the administration’s limited mission and then criticized Obama for going too far.
Confused?
Get used to it. If there is one thing we know for sure, we will continue to have no idea of where Governor Romney really stands on both domestic and foreign issues because where he stands is a constantly moving target.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, Forbes, October 9, 2012
“Not Very Much”: Without The Economy, What Does Romney Have Left Against Obama?
Last Friday’s new job numbers demonstrate that Barack Obama has started to turn around the economy George W. Bush ran aground.
Don’t get me wrong. A 7.8 percent jobless rate is way too high. And the effective jobless rate which includes part-time workers who want full-time work and Americans who have given up hope of ever finding jobs is even worse.
But there have been 31 straight months of growth in the number of private sector jobs. The unemployment rate is still high but there has been a slow and steady decrease in the jobless rate. The picture is even brighter in the battleground states that will pick the next president. In Iowa, the unemployment rate is only 5.5, and it is 5.7 percent in New Hampshire. The unemployment rate would be even lower if the GOP majority in the House of Representatives had approved the president’s proposed American Jobs Act which would have given state and local governments the funds to rehire hundreds of thousands of the teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees who had lost their jobs in the last few years.
One of the striking things about recent national surveys is that Americans now think that Barack Obama is as capable of handling the economy as Mitt Romney. The Battleground national poll conducted for George Washington University last week shows that there are almost as many voters (47 percent) who think President Obama is the best candidate to handle the economy as there are voters (49 percent) who think Romney is the better man for the job.
Romney’s business credentials were his ace in the hole but he played his hand poorly. The steady increase in employment has certainly helped restore trust in the president’s capacity to nourish the economy but the GOP nominee has undermined his own image as a successful entrepreneur.
Romney is his own worst enemy. The infamous “47 percent” video exposed Romney’s callous disregard for Americans like seniors and veterans who are economically dependent on government benefits. The video clearly had an impact on Romney’s standing. The Battleground survey shows the president with a big advantage (56 percent to 40 percent) over Romney for standing up for the middle class.
If the president does win re-election, I suspect that many pundits will say the 47 percent video was the turning point of the campaign. But I think the real pivot point was during the spring when the Obama campaign exposed what Rick Perry called Romney’s time at Bain Capital a career in “vulture capitalism.” At the time, most Democratic insiders dismissed the anti-Bain preemptive attack ads, but they put Romney on the defensive on the only issue that could help him win the campaign. The president also helped himself when he adopted an aggressive message of economic populism in the fall of 2011 after he finally got frustrated over Republican obstructionism.
Monday, Romney gave a speech on foreign policy at the Virginia Military Institute. He has talked about national security a lot lately, and the Romney campaign’s focus on foreign policy may be an admission by Romney that he has lost the edge he had over the president on the economy. Romney’s new emphasis on foreign policy is counterproductive since few voters care about it and because voters give the president good marks for international relations. According to the Battleground poll, few Americans indicate that the wars in the Middle East (4 percent) or terrorism (2 percent) are the most important issues in the campaign. By a margin of 50 percent to 44 percent, voters choose the president as the candidate best able to handle foreign policy.
A story in Politico on Tuesday indicated that the Romney family is pushing the candidate to de-emphasize his anti-Obama economic rhetoric. But if the GOP candidate stops beating up on the president for his economic performance, what does Romney have left? The answer is not very much.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, October 9, 2012
“Public Message Vs Private Message”: What Mitt Romney Says When He Thinks The Public Won’t Hear Him
Mitt Romney, speaking in Virginia today, on the Middle East;
“I know the president hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy.”
Mitt Romney, speaking to donors in Boca in May, on the Middle East:
“[S]o what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem … and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
Hmm. It’s almost as if what Romney says in private, when he thinks the public won’t hear him, differs from what he says in public.
Indeed, towards the end of today’s speech, Romney went on to say, “I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel. On this vital issue, the president has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new president will bring the chance to begin anew.”
Now, as a substantive matter, the notion that “a new president” who has no experience in or working understanding of foreign affairs will suddenly transform the peace process is pretty silly, but there’s another, more obvious problem.
We know Romney doesn’t mean what he’s saying. We know this, of course, because Romney’s said so.
The “47 percent” video didn’t leave any ambiguities in this area. The Republican spoke of “the Palestinians” as a united bloc of one mindset, arguing, “I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way.”
Romney then added he intends to show no leadership in this area at all, “hoping” — remember, “hope is not a strategy” — that someone other than the United States will somehow take the lead. If elected, “recommit America” to anything, except for letting others worry about the dispute after he “kicks the ball down the field.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 8, 2012
“No Greater Sin In Politics”: Mitt Romney’s Biggest Problem Is He Disrespects Most Americans
The reason that Mitt Romney’s condescending comments about the “47 percent” have done such damage to his candidacy is simple. As Republican consultant Alex Castellanos said in Tuesday’s Washington Post: “The only thing in politics that is worse than voters deciding they don’t like you is when voters decide you don’t like them.”
In politics there is no bigger sin than disrespecting voters. It is a sin that is rarely, if ever, forgiven. You can explain your policies and programs. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about how effective you are as a “manager.” It won’t matter.
People don’t want leaders who treat them with disrespect — who believe they are unable to “convince” them to take responsibility for their lives.
Respect is such a core element of voter decision-making because it addresses one of our primary self-interests as human beings. More than most anything else, people want to feel that they have meaning — that their lives make a difference. Meaning in life is our core motivator, and once you tell people that they are, in effect, meaningless pond scum, they are not so inclined to choose you as their leader.
Being disrespected is toxic in just about any human interaction. Nothing engenders more hurt or rage than the feeling that someone thinks you don’t matter. Ask the wife who feels that she is being treated like a piece of furniture by her husband. Ask the employee who can’t stand the high-handed attitude of his boss. Ask any high school kid what he or she fears the most — the disrespect of their classmates.
Great leaders inspire people. That’s just the opposite of communicating disrespect. Inspiration is not something you think, it’s something you feel. When you’re inspired, you feel empowered. You feel that you are part of something bigger than yourself and you can personally play a significant role in attaining that greater goal. When a leader inspires you, he or she does not make you feel that he is important. He makes you feel that you are important — that you matter. Disrespect communicates exactly the opposite.
In the 47 percent video, Mitt Romney did not imply that he disrespected half of the country. He said it directly. He said he didn’t care about “those people” because he could not convince them to take responsibility for their lives. What an arrogant, patronizing, disrespectful thing to say about half of the population.
And it was plain to see that this was not a gaffe. Romney wasn’t awkwardly searching for words. What you saw was the real Romney — the one that his campaign tries to hide — speaking to the home-boys and home-girls from the board rooms and the country club.
The tape by itself would have been bad enough. But its power was magnified because it was one in a long line of Romney comments that showed disrespect for everyday Americans. They have ranged from his contemptuous put-down of the cookies a local person had served him at a drop-by at their back yard, to his patronizing, “I love to fire people,” to his constant reference to “those people.”
And his disrespectful comments extended to his “blooper reel” foreign trip last summer, where he managed to disrespect the people of London and their competency to run the Olympics and the culture of every Palestinian.
Then again, it should not be surprising that disrespect should characterize the Romney foreign policy. He has surrounded himself with a neocon foreign policy team from the Bush years that specialized in showing disrespect for pretty much everyone else in the world. That worked out well.
The 47 percent tape simply served to confirm what most people were already feeling about Mitt Romney — and that’s why it is something that Mitt Romney will find it very hard to escape.
He will try hard in the debates to be respectful and empathetic to the voters. It won’t work, it’s not who he is.
When the Washington Post asked them last month the person they would rather have as the captain of a ship in a storm, the voters were about evenly divided between Obama and Romney. Now they choose Obama 52 percent to 40 percent.
That’s partially because the conventions gave voters a chance to think about where each candidate would lead the country, and which one they believe has the vision and skill to effectively solve the country’s problems.
But it’s also because many voters have become convinced that if Romney were the captain, he might have so little respect for them that he would throw them overboard.
Disrespect correlates very highly with another key parameter that affects voter behavior — the perception of whether a candidate is “on your side.” Of course, it is entirely possible for someone not to be “on your side” and respect you all the same. That happens all the time in sports (or as Romney would say, “sport”). Two teams have conflicting goals and do battle to win, but show the deepest respect for each other’s skill. The same thing happens over negotiating tables in business everyday.
But nothing fires up the members of a football team more than the belief that the other side doesn’t respect them.
And nothing makes for a more inspiring story than when everyday people stand up to those who have disrespected them and refuse to be defeated. That’s exactly what is going to happen November 6th.
Bottom line: you can be a rich guy and win Ohio. But you can’t be a rich guy who disrespects the voters and win Ohio.
BY: Robert Creamer, The Blog, The Huffington Post, October 2, 2012
“Standing Up To China, Romney Style”: MItt Invested In Chinese Company Fined Thousands For Selling Fake College Tests
In the latest Romney campaign reboot, the candidate has made a central theme of President Obama’s alleged softness on China. “Fewer Americans are working today than when President Obama took office,” the narrator of a Romney ad released last week intones. “It doesn’t have to be this way if Obama would stand up to China. China is stealing American ideas and technology.”
The 30-second ad, titled “Stand up to China,” says Obama failed on no fewer than seven occasions to stop China’s violations of intellectual-property laws. FactCheck.org notes that the ad mangles the facts, but beyond that, Romney’s whole focus on China carries perils, not least because he has invested in and profited off of Chinese companies known for violating American businesses’ intellectual property.
Romney’s recently released tax returns show that he invested in the parent company of Youku, a sort of Chinese YouTube that was a haven for pirated movies and TV shows, though the company is now apparently cleaning up its act.
Another notable Romney investment, which has so far gone unnoticed, was in a Chinese private education company that was cited repeatedly in the late 1990s for selling bootleg American graduate school entrance exams and was forced by a Chinese court to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines in a landmark copyright case.
According to his 2011 personal financial disclosure form, Romney’s blind trust invested between $15,001 and $50,000 in New Oriental Education & Technology Group, the largest provider of private educational services in China, though his recent tax returns show he sold at least some of that position. Among other services, New Oriental helps Chinese students prepare for the tests needed to gain admission to American universities, like the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the GRE or the GMAT, the business school entrance exam. The company has said that as many as seven in 10 mainland-Chinese students who attended foreign universities have gone through one of the schools’ test-preparation classes.
A 2001 expose in the the Chronicle Of Higher Education reported that New Oriental, “like other Chinese test-preparation schools, has been pirating and selling Educational Testing Service publications — thus compromising their integrity and costing the testing service money by violating its copyrights.” Educational Testing Service (ETS) is the private nonprofit giant responsible for the TOEFL, the GRE and other tests.
ETS began to get suspicious of New Oriental in late 2000 when they saw “a surprising increase in Chinese student test scores,” University Wire reported at the time. In response, ETS sent a letter to American universities warning them to give extra scrutiny to Chinese students. In November of that year, Chinese authorities raided the school where they “seized thousands of illegal copies of the tests that were being sold logo and all in the bookstore of the New Oriental School,” as the AP reported at the time. The tests sold in the bookstore included “live questions” being used on current tests, leading ETS to believe that New Oriental had paid people to take the tests, memorize the questions, and later reproduce them. The school had already been caught hawking bootleg tests in 1996 and 1997, and despite apologies and promises to stop each time, it apparently did not.
In 2001, ETS and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which administers the GMAT, sued New Oriental in Chinese court. In 2002, the school’s founder and president, who had developed a high profile as China’s leading expert on gaining admission to foreign universities, abruptly resigned. The Straits Times reported the resignation was due to the ETS piracy scandal, but the school denied this.
In 2003, a court in Beijing ruled in ETS and GMAC’s favor and forced New Oriental to pay about $1.2 million in fines, along with over $100,000 in legal fees, and required the school to turn over all illegal copies of ETS and GMAC materials, and publish an apology. New Oriental appealed, and while the decision was upheld, the fine was reduced to $774,000 in 2004.
The ruling became a landmark case in Chinese intellectual property law, as it was the first case argued after China joined the World Trade Organization and a rare win for a plaintiff. “This ruling should give international companies more confidence about operating in China and having their significant intellectual property rights recognized and enforced by the Chinese courts,” the president of GMAC said in a statement. The company has since changed its ways; in 2007, New Oriental and ETS made up when they entered into a licensing agreement.
Since September 2006, when New Oriental began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol EDU, the price has skyrocketed from just over $5 to $17.44 a share today.
It’s not clear from Romney’s personal financial disclosure forms when his trust purchased the position in New Oriental, and the Romney campaign did not respond to a request for comment. New Oriental did not respond to a request either, but has told Businessweek that it doesn’t comment on past litigation. As the campaign has often said of Romney’s investments, his trust, like that of most other politicians, is “blind,” meaning he has no control over how the money is invested and cannot see where his money is kept. While this is true, it still puts Romney in an awkward position to be making money off a company that has a poor record on intellectual property at the same time as he criticizes his opponent for being weak on intellectual property violators.
And while Romney now says that it’s not fair to criticize investments in his blind trust, he did just that in 1994 when running against the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. “The blind trust is an age-old ruse,” Romney said then. “You can always tell a blind trust what it can and cannot do. You give a blind trust rules.”
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, October 1, 2012
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