Romney Campaign Shames America By Criticizing POTUS on Foreign Soil

Last updated on July 27th, 2012 at 02:40 pm

After promising not to attack President Obama on foreign soil, Mitt Romney let’s his advisers do it for him. I suspected after Romney’s unprecedented debacle with the Australian Foreign Minister that Romney’s overseas show, designed to put to bed his lack of credentials in foreign policy, would be a disaster. I had no idea it would happen so quickly.

And how do Romney’s people attack the President? I’ll give you a guess. These are the people who are pushing the meme that the President is “foreign” and not to subtly catering to the birthers. If you guessed an ode to racism, you win.

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The Romney advisers told the Telegraph UK that Romney is part of the “Anglo-Saxon” heritage, a history that Obama does not share.

No, really:

As the Republican presidential challenger accused Barack Obama of appeasing America’s enemies in his first foreign policy speech of the US general election campaign, advisers told The Daily Telegraph that he would abandon Mr Obama’s “Left-wing” coolness towards London.

In remarks that may prompt accusations of racial insensitivity, one suggested that Mr Romney was better placed to understand the depth of ties between the two countries than Mr Obama, whose father was from Africa.

“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the adviser said of Mr Romney, adding: “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have”.

This might be a good time to mention that Obama’s Kansas born grandfather (who raised Obama after the age of 10), Stanley Dunham, was a 26-year-old supply sergeant stationed near the English Channel with the U.S. Army Air Forces when the invasion of Normandy began.

If you’re wondering why the Romney camp is going for the lowest common denominator yet again, it’s because they have nothing else. You see, they don’t even know what their policy would be, and can’t define how it would be any different from Obama’s:

The advisers could not give detailed examples of how policy towards Britain would differ under Mr Romney. One conceded that on the European crisis: “I’m not sure what our policy response is.”

This is nothing new, as Romney has avoided specifics on his Afghanistan policy as well, another subject you people don’t need to know about, apparently — even as deployed troops and their families might appreciate knowing exactly where the candidate stands on the matter.

And then you have to wonder at their claim that unlike Obama, Romney cares about Islamic terrorism, as if it weren’t under President Obama’s direction that we finally got Osama.

Ignoring Obama’s instructions that their political differences should end at the “water’s edge” (in other words, stick together as Americans please), the Romney advisers simply undermined the American President during a time of war but refused to be named as they criticized the President on foreign soil (it doesn’t count if you do it like a coward, right?). Telegraph UK wrote, “after leaving London, he (Romney) will deliver a speech in Jerusalem on Sunday, again threatening Iran and criticising Mr Obama for declining to visit Israel since taking office.”

Yes, well, thanks for standing by us, Mitt Romney.

We expected this after he put words in Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s mouth in order to criticize Obama by proxy, causing the distraught Australian to have to issue a clarification of exactly what he said to Romney and how Romney got it wrong.

Romney has just embarked on his Criticize the American President on Foreign Soil tour, so buckle up. Remember when criticizing the President wasn’t even allowed by musicians when we had a Republican president?

This is just a week after the Romney camp started their desperate birther smear campaign in an effort to distract you people from his refusal to show you his tax returns and his Bain I was there, I wasn’t there dance:

Indeed, the Romney team, and even Romney himself, spent all of Tuesday painting the president as not a “real” American. Here is a timeline of the campaign’s orchestrated smear:

11:00 AM — OBAMA IS ‘SMOKING SOMETHING,’ GREW UP IN INDONESIA: Obama “has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.” [Co-chair John Sununu, Fox News]

11:30 AM — OBAMA HAS TO ‘LEARN HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN’: “The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses, from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. It is the American way. And I wish this president would learn how to be an American. [Co-chair John Sununu, Romney campaign conference call]

Romney is starting to remind me of Sarah Palin in all the wrong ways, and that’s a shame for a man who is clearly smart and capable of so much more. Whereas Palin was a true believer and a real racist, Romney is not. He knows better than this, but he can’t seem to help himself. The lure of power is enough to make him drop all pretense of the stiff formality and blue blood he represents, but even when stooping down to catch the sewer rats, Romney lacks the vitality of Palin. He can’t even honestly connect with the racists in his party. Romney is indeed a classist, which usually translates to policies that fail to take in all minority interests, but he’s letting his advisers go full Southern Strategy racist.

These are the tactics of a candidate who is desperately hoping to avoid a real discussion on foreign policy. Perhaps he doesn’t want Americans to realize that he’s staffed to the gills with war hawk ex Bushies. Romney is still beating the Iran war drums, and maybe he doesn’t want to talk about his draft dodging days in France selling Mormonism to the elite socialists.

I didn’t realize it was an Anglo-Saxon tradition for a war-hawk draft-dodger to cowardly undermine one’s own country via one’s entourage. Is the Romney camp suggesting that only a white Anglo-Saxon can properly run America?

The job of President requires skill in international relations and diplomacy. We’ve yet to see Romney demonstrate that he can finesse his way through tricky situations with a modicum of grace, let alone keep from making the sort of mistake he made with Bob Carr. That mistake eclipsed even novice Sarah Palin’s handling of foreign policy when she was a candidate. At least she waited until she lost to undermine America while overseas.

Romney’s crass efforts to avoid a real discussion once again involve throwing the red meat of not even covert racism into the arena while he runs the other way.

Sarah Jones

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