"Pretty much everybody in politics, Republicans included, is shaking his or her head over Mitt Romney's ham-handed attack on the Obama administration and equally clumsy follow-up today. But Romney's strategy here was a perfectly straightforward application of the foreign-policy principles that have guided his campaign from the outset."And so, when militant Islamists attacked an American embassy, Romney automatically reverted to this line, releasing a statement charging '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.' This was triply false: (1) The statement in question was not made by the Obama administration but by the embassy staff, (2) it was not a response to the attacks but a (justifiably panicked) attempt to preempt them, in keeping with a long-standing bipartisan practice of distancing the U.S. from inflammatory religious provocation, and (3) it was not an expression of sympathy with attackers or other militants."
The pundits pondered endlessly yesterday about the political implications of this latest major faux pas from Camp RomRyan. Once this is clear, however, Elder Willard's understanding of foreign policy is more at home on Planet Kolob than Washington, DC.
