“Aiding And Abetting”: Romney Joined Bush-Cheney Smear Campaign On John Kerry’s National Security Record In 2004
Mitt Romney doesn’t like it that President Obama’s re-election campaign in a new video decided to tout the president’s decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and to question — based on his comments from 2007 — whether Romney would have done the same thing. Here’s Romney complainingabout the video ad on CBS this morning:
ROMNEY: And the idea to try to politicize this, and to say, “oh, I, President Obama would have done it one way and Mitt Romney would have done it another,” is really disappointing. Let’s not make the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden a politically divisive event. There are plenty of differences between President Obama and myself. But let’s not make up ones based on, “Well he might not have done this.” It’s disappointing and it’s unfortunate and it’s taking an event that really brought America together.
Back in 2004, President Bush ran a smear campaign against challenger Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) which undermined his service in Vietnam and questioned Kerry’s ability and determination to protect the United States — just three years removed from the 9/11 attacks — from another terror strike. “If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again,” then Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time.
And while Romney complains about Obama’s alleged “politicization” now, he willfully participated in the Bush-Cheney smear campaign on Kerry in 2004. During an August 9, 2004 (accessed via Lexis/Nexis) interview on Fox News, Romney suggested that Kerry would “twiddle his thumbs” when dealing with terrorism and in September 2004, also on Fox News, Romney said Kerry is too much of a flip-flopper to protect the country:
ROMNEY: [M]ost has already been said about John Kerry. I think people know pretty well that he’s a guy who has a hard time finding which side of a position to come down on. But I’m going to focus on the fact that our nation needs strong leadership. We’re under attack, militarily, economically. Our very way of life is under attack. And we need to have the kind of steady, strong leadership, which is represented by Dick Cheney, and by of course, President George W. Bush.
In his speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC) in New York City, Romney said “America is under attack from almost every direction,” later adding, “On the just war our brave soldiers are fighting to protect free people everywhere, there is no question: George W. Bush is right, and the ‘Blame America First’ crowd is wrong.”
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent also notes that during his speech at the 2008 RNC, Romney “blasted Obama as untrustworthy when it comes to combating ‘the threat from radical, violent jihad,’ which he contrasted with John McCain, who, apparently unlike Obama, understands that ‘radical, violent Islam is evil,’ and will do everything he can to defeat it.”
“Republicans are — forgive the cliché — shocked, shocked to discover that a presidential contender is ‘politicizing’ an important national event,” Jon Meacham writes today, noting that Obama’s alleged “politicizing” might be a bit different from what the GOP knows. “In this sense,” Meacham writes, “‘politicizing’ might be best translated as ‘beating us up and we don’t have anything much to say to stop it.”
By: Ben Armbruster and Igor Volsky, May 1, 2012
“Just Zip It”: GOP Attacks On Obama’s Bin Laden Success Are Hypocritical
Former Gov. Mitt Romney and his advisers and surrogates are going apoplectic over the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden and the attention President Obama is getting for the success.
They absolutely hate that he is using the events in ads and are especially defensive that the Obama campaign is pointing out Romney’s own statements that he “wouldn’t move heaven and earth” to get bin Laden and that he was against going into Pakistan unannounced.
Well, as I write this, the networks just reported that President Obama has arrived in Afghanistan on a surprise visit. My, my, now we are really going to hear from the Romney campaign, or won’t we?
If I were them, I would just zip it. The Republicans look unbelievably hypocritical on this one.
Remember “Mission Accomplished”—landing on that aircraft carrier declaring victory in Iraq? Oops. Remember the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004? Remember President Bush and the Republicans trying to use 9/11 as a political club to beat Sen. John Kerry?
Go back and review the speeches at that Republican convention from Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in particular. Or how about Ed Koch, or Bernard Kerik, or even retired General Tommy Franks? And, yes, even one Mitt Romney, who declared, “George W. Bush is right, and the ‘Blame America First Crowd’ is wrong!”
Playing politics with the tragedy of 9/11 or even the war in Iraq was the Republicans’ mantra.
I guess they were for it before they were against it, huh?
The bottom line is that President Obama did the right thing at tremendous risk to the lives of men under his command and with a real risk of failure. He knew, as we all do now, that had this mission not been successful lives would have been lost and his political career would have been over. And, yet, he had the courage, the grace under pressure, to make the call. That is what we call leadership.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World report, May 1, 2012
“Pouncing On Presidential Coolness”: Meanwhile, Molasses Mitt Slow Jams To Merv Griffin
The right has come up with a new line of attack against Barack Obama: He’s too cool.
You read that right.
Suddenly, it was an act of unpresidential affrontery for Obama to go on Jimmy Fallon’s show. Never mind that presidents and presidential candidates have been doing the late-night thing for two decades, back to Bubba’s sax-playing moment with Arsenio. Never mind that Mitt Romney recited a silly Top Ten list on Letterman and pretended to be reading Kim Kardashian’s tweets. Never mind that George W. Bush went on Oprah. Obama was a bad boy.
“I thought it was really bad, that we had so many issues and problems going on in this country, around the world, and you can’t swing a cat without finding President Obama on a comedy show,” said Fox contributor Dana Perino, Bush’s last White House press secretary.
And there was grumbling about Obama’s comedy stylings at Saturday’s White House Correspondents Dinner. He was too sharp in going after Romney, he shouldn’t have joked about eating dog meat, and so on. (Uh—I can remember when Bush poked fun at not finding those weapons of mass destruction.)
So is hipness now a political liability?
Clearly this is a concerted effort to turn the president’s charm and wit against him. The Republicans are saddled with a somewhat awkward candidate. It’s hard to imagine Mitt slow-jamming the news on Fallon’s show. No wonder Obama deadpanned at the dinner that Romney “asked if he could get some equal time on The Merv Griffin Show.” Romney isn’t even sure whether to accept an invitation from SNL.
All this is reminiscent of a controversial ad that John McCain ran against Obama in 2008, dubbing him the world’s biggest celebrity and likening him to Paris Hilton. (Today I guess it would be Kim Kardashian or Lindsay Lohan, both of whom were at the correspondents’ dinner.) The Republican National Committee has posted a web ad cutting between clips of Obama riffing with Fallon and Romney giving a serious speech, with the tag line #notfunny.
There’s a larger problem here for the Romney camp. Obama, whether you think he’s cool or condescening, is widely seen by the public as a likable guy. Mitt is widely seen as a stiff. That is not going to change. So in a classic case of political ju-jitsu, the conservatives are trying to turn the president’s strength into a liability: Yeah yeah, he’s hip, he’s happening, but what has he really accomplished? Wouldn’t you rather go with the boring businessman who might fix the ailing economy?
I’m not sure that works. But it may be the best card his team has to play if Romney wants to be performing at next year’s White House Correspondents Dinner.
“Whiter Than George W. Bush”: Mitt Romney’s Doomed Immigration Gambit
It seems clear that the main issue Mitt Romney is going to use to try to reestablish himself as a moderate is immigration. He told a private audience on April 15 that “we have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party” and warned that current polling “spells doom for us.” Then, on Monday, he made himself available to the media for the first time in a month—while standing beside Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a leading veepstakes name. Can Romney, who staked out an immigration position during the primaries that left him sounding like Pat Buchanan, really pull this off? My bet: He’ll be smooth, he’ll do almost everything right, he’ll say all the right things—and he’ll end up with something very much like the 31 percent of the Latino vote John McCain got, maybe two or three points more, tops. The reason is simple: Romney, like his party, is just too white.
But before we get to art, let’s start with science—the polls. Obama leads Romney among Latinos by around 40 points, maybe more. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey said 69 to 22 percent. How does Romney need to perform among Latinos? I have no idea, actually. Republicans speak wistfully of the 42 percent of that vote George W. Bush received in 2004, so they must think of it as some kind of holy grail. Bush got elected in 2004, so apparently that’s some sort of benchmark for them. Certainly, even 37 or maybe 35 percent of the Latino vote in the Mountain West for Romney would make the Obama team revert to Plan B or C as concerns Colorado and New Mexico (nationally, Latinos made up 9 percent of the overall vote in 2008; that will be up to 11 or 12 percent this year). So Romney needs to gain around 15 points—or, put another and more daunting way, he needs to improve on his present performance by 37 percent (i.e., going from 22 to 35 percent would be a 37 percent improvement).
Is that remotely possible? What would he do? Well, start with the most obvious move, picking Rubio as vice-president. Huge media buzz, of course. All manner of breathless predictions on the Sunday shows about how this changes everything—potential first Latino president, complete paradigm shift, all the rest.
One problem. There is no signal, at least yet, that Rubio would make a whit of difference. Last weekend, a poll came out in which 1,000-plus Latinos were asked about Obama-Biden matchups against Romney-Rubio, and Romney paired with various other Hispanic Republicans—including Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico (who has said she will not accept the job) and Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada. They made no difference, the poll found. In fact, in Florida, Obama did better among Latinos against Romney with Rubio on the ticket, suggesting that maybe to know him isn’t to love him.
Now we move on to substance, or at least to symbol-substance. At that same April 15 private event mentioned above, Romney said that as president he would pass a GOP version of the DREAM Act. This is exactly what Rubio has spent this week touting. Unlike the Democratic DREAM Act, it wouldn’t include a possible path to citizenship, just to green-card status. Latino groups hate it, and it does seem like an empty-calorie kind of bill, I have to say. It’s true that there are millions of permanent residents living in the United States now—about 1.1 million green cards are granted each year. But all of these people do have a future shot at citizenship, so at least they can all dream of being citizens one day, whereas under the Rubio bill, those who win such status can’t.
This is pretty small potatoes compared to what Bush supported. Remember, he was in favor of Teddy Kennedy’s immigration bill! He put a respectable amount of political capital into it, until the shitstorm hit and he backed down. Bush took what people could see was a bit of a risk. A non-citizenship DREAM Act compares to serious and comprehensive immigration reform in about the way Plessy v. Ferguson compares to Brown v. Board of Education.
And finally—art. Art is so underestimated in politics. Romney is just sooooo white. Even whiter than the Osmonds. Bush wasn’t that white. He came from a state where these days you can’t help but know some Latinos, and he spoke him a little esspanyole, even. But Romney? He fired some guys working on his lawn because he couldn’t afford the political liability of employing them, as he openly admitted at one of those GOP debates. Aside from that—well, I admit I’m no more up on the latest salsa artists than Mitt is, but do you think that guy has ever listened to one Tito Puente record in his life? Has he ever known a Latino person, outside of those who clean his houses and trim his lawns? It’s quite possible that he does. But he sure doesn’t look like he does.
Romney, therefore, will make some moves that will impress the largely white commentariat, and he’ll bump up a little among certain high-income Latino demographics. But average Latino voters, men and women who work really hard every day for white bosses, are just going to find that he reminds them too much of the guy who docks their pay when the bus comes late. And they won’t be wrong—he basically is that guy. There’s no overcoming that. He’s a 31 percenter at best.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, April 26, 2012
“Omission Accomplished: GOP Fantasy World Foreign Policy
Perusing the text of Marco Rubio’s foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution, I notice a word that doesn’t appear: Iraq. It’s so hard to believe that I’ve read the speech twice and executed a word search three times. Did he think no one would notice? The Senator from Florida has given a lengthy address about the wisdom of American intervention without so much as acknowledging the most consequential foreign intervention that we’ve undertaken in decades.
This is the same Marco Rubio who says George W. Bush, whose presidency was defined by Iraq, did a fantastic job. As recently as last fall he was fearful that the United States was leaving the Iraq too quickly. Back in 2010 he avowed that the Iraq War made America safer and better off.
But Iraq has now disappeared from his analysis of American foreign policy. He manages to avoid talking about Iraq even as he frets that Iran is attempting to rule over the rest of the Middle East. Does Rubio ever ponder what recent military campaign effectively increased their influence in the region?
Says Michael Brendan Dougherty, “Rubio’s speech is a remarkable political document. It shows that some Senators have learned nothing from the past decade.” He’s mostly right, but there is one important caveat. The interventionists have apparently learned to stop acknowledging the Iraq War, for their vague generalities about America’s role in the world cannot survive a confrontation with a decade of costly, catastrophic intervention. Better to pretend the debacle never happened, even while ratcheting up the rhetoric about Syria and Iran.
It’s a perfect distillation of how ideological and divorced from empiricism the neoconservative project has become. A subject is raised at length — but the most relevant real world example isn’t. Rubio making foreign policy for a fantasy world, and we’d all be better off if someone bought him a Risk board so that he could work out his delusions of strategic acumen with fewer consequences.
By: Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, April 25, 2012
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