“Words Have Meaning”: Mitt Romney Is Not Fit To Be Commander In Chief
Many of us were shocked, including a lot of Republicans, when Mitt Romney did not reference the troops nor Afghanistan in his speech at the Republican National Convention. Now aids in his camp will say Mitt wanted to focus on the economy; but that doesn’t seem to sit well with most, even in GOP land. After all, the military is normally part of the Republican package.
There are those close to the Romney campaign that said he was advised to visit Afghanistan and talk to commanders while he made his world tour visiting England, Poland, and Israel at the time of the Olympics. After all, Mitt Romney’s not interviewing to be the CEO of a financial company like Bain Capitol, nor is he looking to be elected the governor of a state like Massachusetts; he is vying for the title commander in chief, so how can he ignore the military, Afghanistan, and other issues of national security?
And one would think Mitt would redeem himself in the days since the convention has passed. But he has not. He still has avoided any opportunity to repair the damage from that omission. On Saturday, Romney sat down with Bret Baier of Fox News and said, in response to a question about this omission:
I only regret you’re repeating it day in, day out. [Laughter] … When you give a speech, you don’t go through a laundry list. You talk about the things that you think are important and I describe, in my speech, my commitment to a strong military.
And on Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press he stated:
I find it interesting that people are curious about mentioning words in a speech as opposed to policy … I have some differences on policy with the president. I happen to think those are more important than what word I mention in each speech.
Well Romney, it’s going to be repeated, especially by the Democrats, and it will be day in and day out for the remaining nine weeks until this presidential election. National security and Romney’s lack of knowledge on this issue is not a laughing matter. When you addressed the Republican convention, you did go through a laundry list, as did Obama, who managed to tick each box needed to address each issue and each group’s concerns within the party. Doesn’t Romney feel that the military, our troops being in our longest war to date in Afghanistan, and national security are issues that are “important?”
And when did he describe in his speech his “commitment to a strong military?” Guess I missed that one—as did the rest of America. And as far as Romney finding it interesting that people are concerned about the words a politician uses, he better hang on if he wants to sit in the oval office and call it his for four years. It’s not the “word” people are concerned with, it’s the entire military and war we are involved with and matters of national security that Romney omitted in his speech and continues to avoid discussing.
And with the upcoming debates upon us, Romney better do his homework—especially with regards to national security issues—because the president will be ready and the president will beat Mitt’s butt on that issue if Romney isn’t prepared. (Of course I as a Democrat have my fingers crossed on that one.)
Nearly 40,000 people tweeted when the president tore apart Mitt Romney for saying Russia rather than al Qaeda was our enemy; for not being willing to work with China; and for offending our closest ally, the United Kingdom, during the Olympics.
And now with the attacks in Libya and Egypt, and the death of an American ambassador, rather than work toward a solution to this problem, former Governor Romney chooses to politicize the death of an American ambassador. Romney attacked the Obama administration’s response to the incidents in Libya and Egypt. In a statement he released at 10:24 p.m. Tuesday night, he said, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
And that, we know, is a lie. At 10:10 p.m. the Obama administration disavowed the statement by the U.S. embassy in Cairo. At 10:44 p.m. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. And Wednesday Obama campaign Press Secretary Ben LaBolt responded, “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack.”
If Mitt Romney continues to ignore discussing our military, the war in Afghanistan, and national security issues, and attacks the current administration, using an ambassador’s death for his own political gain and to further divide our nation, is he truly fit to be commander in chief? Come November, the voters will answer that question.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, September 13, 2012
The Danger of “Scoring Points”: By Trying To Make Obama Look Bad, Romney Makes Himself Look Like An Asshole
Mitt Romney is running for president. And I guess it can be hard, when you’re running for president and your focus every day is convincing the American voter that you’re a great guy and your opponent is awful, not to approach every new development in the world by seeing it as yet another opportunity to tell everyone that your opponent is awful. But when the only question you ask yourself is, “How can I use this to make my opponent look bad?” you run the risk of making yourself look like a jerk. Sometimes during a campaign, a candidate will be asked, “Is there anything your opponent has done that you agree with?” or “Is there anything good you can say about him?” Usually they say, “He has a lovely family,” as though the thought that he might have done a single thing right is just impossible to contemplate. To say otherwise would be passing up an opportunity to “score points.”
And this, I think, is the root of why Romney did what he did yesterday and came out looking like such an asshole. American civil servants had died in the line of duty, and the only thing he could think to do was use it as the occasion for a weak, unpersuasive attack on Barack Obama, delivered at an appallingly inappropriate moment. All he wanted was to “score points.”
Romney seems to be laboring under the mistaken belief that his challenge on foreign policy is to make voters think poorly of Barack Obama. In fact, his challenge on foreign policy is to make voters consider him a credible president. That’s really all. As long as they think Romney would be reasonable on foreign policy, which is a secondary consideration for almost all of them anyway, it would be enough. Romney is just never going to be able to argue persuasively that Obama has been a foreign policy disaster, and he doesn’t have to. Four years ago the average voter thought the sitting president was such a disaster, committing blunder after blunder and undermining American interests around the world. But today only the most partisan Republican believes that, and Romney no longer needs to appeal to partisan Republicans.
At times of crisis and tragedy, Americans want our leaders to channel the emotions we’re feeling and be the people we want ourselves to be. That’s why, for instance, the best moment of George W. Bush’s presidency was when he stood on top of the rubble at the World Trade Center and said, “I hear you, the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” For all the spectacular screw-ups that came afterward, at that moment Bush perfectly expressed Americans’ anger and their desire to be strong and resilient (and take revenge). That’s why his approval ratings shot up to over 90 percent.
Mitt Romney failed to realize that when Americans are killed overseas, it’s not like every other thing that happens during a campaign. According to The New York Times, Romney’s reaction to the violence was actually the product of a lengthy discussion with his aides, during which I guess they agreed that what really mattered in this situation was not so much that American officials had been killed, but that a statement released by the Cairo embassy could, with the proper disingenuous description of the chronology involved, be described as some kind of weakness and “apologizing” and also attributed directly to Barack Obama. It sounds utterly insane, but that’s the conclusion they came to.
What they obviously didn’t do was take a moment to put themselves in the shoes of a typical American. Was the typical American going to learn of these events and say, “What really has me steamed isn’t the murders in Benghazi, it’s that statement the Cairo embassy put out.” Of course not. Instead, the typical American voter ended up watching Romney and saying, “For cripe’s sake, Americans died, all because of some insane amateurish movie, and this is what you have to say? To come out and whine about how the Obama administration handled a frigging tweet sent out by an embassy staffer? Are you kidding me? What a jackass.”
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 13, 2012
“He Who Has No Name”: At News Conference, Republicans Made No Reference To Party Standard-Bearer Mitt Romney
Republican leaders had all kinds of things to talk about in their first day back on Capitol Hill from their month-long recess.
They spoke about jobs and the economy, about military spending and automatic budget cuts, about the national debt and the need for energy legislation.
But there was one thing House Republican leaders did not mention in their statements to the cameras after Tuesday morning’s caucus: Mitt Romney.
They uttered 1,350 words in their opening remarks at the news conference but made no reference to the party standard-bearer who would be at the top of their ticket in just 56 days.
NBC’s Luke Russert tried to help the lawmakers address this omission. “Governor Romney said that it was a bad decision for Republicans to agree to the bipartisan debt deal,” he pointed out. “What’s your response to him?”
House Speaker John Boehner, who negotiated the deal, looked unwell.
“I don’t think there’s anybody that worked harder than Eric and I to try to work with the president to come to an agreement,” he said, with Majority Leader Eric Cantor standing just behind him. Boehner tried to pin the agreement’s automatic cuts in defense spending on President Obama, but he ultimately defended the package: “Somehow, we have to deal with our spending problem.”
That Romney would go on “Meet the Press” and say that last year’s bipartisan spending deal was a “mistake”— never mind thatRomney had applauded Boehner for negotiating the deal at the time — made clear that the GOP nominee does not wish to run on the record of congressional Republicans.
That House Republicans would not so much as breathe Romney’s name makes clear the sentiment is mutual.
The seven leaders at the microphone didn’t mention Romney even when asked about him — as though he is some sort of political Voldemort. Instead, they kept contrasting House Republicans’ record on jobs bills with those of Senate Democrats and the White House while leaving Romney out of it.
For good measure, the Republican lawmakers also praised a bill that would remove trade restrictions on Russia, a country Romney has called “our number one geopolitical foe”; Romney opposes the trade measure unless Russia is also punished over human rights.
The estrangement seen in the past few days is part of a broader dynamic in which the Republican Party seems to be readying itself to cut and run from its nominee. At the convention in Tampa, a gaggle of younger Republicans — Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, Rand Paul — delivered speeches light on mentions of Romney and heavy on self-promotion. Overall, Romney was mentioned far less at his convention than Obama was at the Democratic convention.
This tepidity furthers the impression that Romney is a placeholder for the next generation of Republicans, tempered by partisan squabbles and disciplined by conservative activists, and unwilling to negotiate or compromise. Romney himself, though a businessman by temperament, had to affect the younger Republicans’ mannerisms to win the nomination. He further ingratiated himself with the young conservatives by tapping as his running mate Rep. Paul Ryan — one of a trio of self-styled “young guns” in the House, with Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.
In the House GOP caucus meeting Tuesday, Boehner told his members privately that the choice of Ryan “validated all the work House Republicans have done over the past 19 months.” Boehner is correct about that. The Ryan choice was a bow to where the power is in the party, where it’s going and who its future leaders are. If Romney wins, congressional conservatives would drive his agenda from Capitol Hill. If Romney loses, congressional conservatives would immediately inherit the party in preparation for 2014 and 2016.
Either way, it promises to be a cacophony. At the news conference that followed the caucus gathering, a campaign-style backdrop proclaimed “Focused on American Jobs” and repeated the phrase “American Jobs” 30 times. But it was also Sept. 11, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) argued that the hijackers “didn’t attack us as a Republican or a Democrat; they attacked us as Americans, and we would do well to remember that.”
The leaders had difficulty sticking to either theme in their zeal to campaign against the president: “There’s a lack of leadership in this administration. . . . Can’t find a job in the Obama economy. . . . The president has done nothing.” Boehner said he was “not confident at all” about avoiding downgrades of U.S. debt, accusing Obama of being “absent without leave.”
Actually, Obama has been present; Republicans just find his presence objectionable. The notable absence from congressional Republicans’ calculations is Romney.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 11, 2012
“The Devil Is In The Details”: The Paradoxes Of Romney’s “Specificity Problem”
Every candidate confronts the question of how detailed they should be in their policy plans, and the basic calculation goes as follows: I want to seem substantive and serious, so it’s good to have detailed plans, but I don’t want the plans to be so detailed that they give my opponent something to use against me and allow voters to find things they don’t like. So usually they find some middling level of specificity, and tolerate whatever criticism they get from one end for not being detailed enough, and from the other end for specific ideas people don’t like. But rarely does the question of how specific you’re being become a story in and of itself.
Mitt Romney has arrived at that moment, when his unwillingness to reveal exactly what he wants to do in a variety of policy areas is becoming a story in its own right. Here’s Steve Kornacki writing about it in Salon. Here’s The Wall Street Journal editorial page criticizing him for not being specific. Here’s aTPM report on other conservatives scolding Romney for his vagueness. Here’san L.A. Times editorial asking for specifics on Romney’s tax plan (which we’ll get to in a moment. Here’s an NPR story about the specificity question. And President Obama is picking up the issue and using it as an attack, which helps propel the story forward.
It’s one thing to be vague because you think getting bogged down in a discussion of details will distract from your broader message, but it’s another thing to be vague because a discussion of details will reveal that you’re promising things you can’t possibly deliver. And Romney’s real problem, as Matt Yglesias pointed out, isn’t that he’s being completely vague but that he’s been specific in some parts of what he’s proposed but vague in others. He says he wants to cut all income tax rates 20 percent (specific!) and that when he does it, not only will wealthy people not pay any less (specific!) but that the whole thing will be revenue-neutral (specific!). If he had just said “I want to cut income tax rates, and we’ll look for deductions to eliminate and try to do it in a way that won’t increase the deficit,” I doubt this would be an issue. But because he offered some specifics but refuses to say how he’ll make his proposals add up—by explaining which deductions and loopholes he wants to eliminate to pay for the rate cuts, or even suggesting a single deduction or loophole he’d eliminate—he has backed himself into a corner.
And once he starts getting asked questions about it, he sounds incredibly squirrelly. When David Gregory pressed Romney for the specifics of his tax plan, Romney said, “Well, the—the specifics are these which is those principles I described are the heart of my policy.” That’s right, the principles are the specifics. Which is like you saying, “Here’s a chicken salad sandwich,” and when I say, “No, this is just two pieces of bread,” you reply, “Well, the bread isthe chicken salad.”
It’s important to remember that Mitt’s lack of specificity isn’t anything new, and it isn’t just about taxes. Months ago, I was complaining that though he had built his entire campaign on the idea that his private sector experience gave him a unique understanding of the economy that would enable him to create millions of jobs (“I understand how the economy works!” he says a dozen times every day), not only had he not offered a single policy proposal that was any different from what every Republican has been proposing for decades, he wasn’t even capable of saying what exactly he learned in the private sector. (When pressed, he did manage to explain that businesses have to pay for energy, so if energy were cheaper, they’d make more money. Truly revelatory.)
This is one of the paradoxes of Mitt Romney. He’s famously detail-oriented, thinking in PowerPoint presentations and capable of saying, “Here are twelve things we can do” and rattling off every one. His running mate is supposedly the wonkiest wonk in the GOP. Yet he’s put himself in a position where not only does he not want to get into the details of what he would do as president, he can’t. What is he supposed to do now that he finds himself in this position? On the loophole question he could come up with a piddling loophole or two that he’d eliminate, then face questions about how inadequate it is. Or he could say, “I’ll get rid of the mortgage interest deduction” and make everyone freak out. So my guess is he’ll hunker down and hope that in a couple of days this all goes away, just like the question of his tax returns did.
That was really the same problem in a different form: he wanted to look open and transparent, but he didn’t actually want people to see the tax forms. So he stood firm, and eventually the controversy ran its course and now nobody asks him about it anymore. Going through that process, however, reinforced the image of him as a plutocrat hiding something from the voters. This specificity question will eventually go away too, but by the time that happens he may have sustained real damage.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 11, 2012
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