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September 13, 2012 05:15 PM UTC

Editorial Boards Across America Rip Romney

  • 25 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Briefly citing a few responses from editorial boards around the nation to the unfolding story of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s shrill and factually questionable criticism of President Barack Obama–after an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya Tuesday resulted in the first violent death of an American ambassador in 25 years.

Washington Post:

At a news conference, Mr. Romney claimed that the administration had delivered “an apology for America’s values.” In fact, it had done no such thing: Religious tolerance, as much as freedom of speech, is a core American value. The movie that provoked the protests, which mocks the prophet Muhammad and portrays Muslims as immoral and violent, is a despicable piece of bigotry; it was striking that Mr. Romney had nothing to say about such hatred directed at a major religious faith.

New York Times:

Mr. Romney could easily have held his fire during this crisis, if he could not summon the decency to support the United States government. Instead, he misrepresented the administration as “sympathizing” with the attackers. There was no truth in what he said. In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made the first official comment on the killings, a strong condemnation, before Mr. Romney released his statement. Even after having a night to reconsider his response, Mr. Romney merely doubled down on his false charges, as he is prone to do.

Los Angeles Times:

Former President George W. Bush expressed similar sentiments in 2006 when Muslims around the world were angered by the publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad. And it was absurd for Romney to suggest that the embassy statement was the administration’s “first response” to the Benghazi violence given that the attack hadn’t even occurred yet.

On Wednesday, an unchastened Romney reiterated his indictment of the administration, coupling his condolences for the slain Americans with the observation that Tuesday’s events showed that “American leadership is still sorely needed” – leadership he is eager to provide. In mixing sympathy with specious attacks and self-promotion, Romney has diminished himself.

The Denver paper calls Romney “out of line” in an editorial today that primarily focuses on the attacks themselves. We visited the Colorado Springs Gazette this morning expecting to see a full-throated defense of Romney from reliably pro-Republican editorial board chair Wayne Laugesen; it appears he is still writing it. Politically, we’ll have to wait and see what this incident amounts to. Attacks on American embassies in the Middle East reportedly continue, and with Romney showing no signs of walking back his remarks despite broad condemnation even in his own party, there’s a good chance that more Republicans will begin to “double down” with him.

The fact is, if this is a step toward unprecedented levels of acrimony for a presidential campaign, it’s really not Romney’s first. Perhaps it’s the first one to shock neutral observers, who might have dismissed an idle joke about Obama’s birth certificate. Romney’s willingness to accuse Obama of “sympathizing” with the attackers and “apologizing for American values” before the full circumstances were known, then to refuse to back off those accusations after it became obvious his timeline and facts were completely wrong is, objectively speaking, not responsible behavior.

But the editorial boards will have to wait for voters to affirm that judgment.

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25 thoughts on “Editorial Boards Across America Rip Romney”

  1. That if, as WaPo says, the video portrays Muslims as violent, they then go and prove it.

    I would question how a god, any god, worshiped as all powerful, would need the help of fragile, temporary critters like us.

    Some of the many reasons I finally embraced atheism. At least it’s intellectually consistent.

  2. The Republicans selected this guy as their candidate as a joke.  

    None of them thought he could win in a straight-up contest for the best President, even against the Dem’s un-candidate.

    But by trying to turn this election into a contest of who is crazier, that is a fight that Romney can win.  

  3. it appears he is still writing it.

    HA! So many hope this will blow over, but it’s just another brick in the wall for screechy neoconservativism in this election..  You have to know how to build one to break one down.  

  4. they actually thought Obama would do nothing?  Has anything in Obama’s past performance pointed to such a probability? Because I’m sure what they didn’t want was an ongoing contrast between Obama as Commander in Chief sending drones, marines and warships while their boy is getting pounded for going off half cocked in a disgusting, fact free, politically motivated attack on his own government while our people are under attack.

    I have a suggestion for Mr. Romney.  Please admit that you’re completely unqualified. Do the decent thing, bow out of the race and join Sarah Palin at her house from which you can both play at keeping an eye on your idea of the greatest geopolitical threat to our existence, Russia, out of the way of the grownups who need to deal with the reality based world unimpeded.

  5. Complacent and happy, thinking the election is in the bag.

    You’re so happy you’ll poo-poo any reasonable request to show my medical records.

    Remember Wisconsin!

      3. You’re probably going to have to email the govs about this if you want it resolved.

        Personally, I’d support you. Unlike other parody-of-polster accounts like Libertad 2.0 and BJWilson86.86, this one is subtle enough not to be immediately detectable, and therefore fool the unaware into thinking that this is, in fact, one of your posts. (You’ve probably received that email where all the letters in each word, except the first and last, are scrambled, but the brain compensates and makes it possible for you to read anyway? That’s going on with “dywer” too.)

        Just to be clear, my only objection to “dywer” is that it’s possible to fall for it and believe his/her posts are dwyer’s. I now know what to look for (the “I told you so” sig line) so I don’t fall for them anymore, but I did at first. I believe others have as well.

        I don’t know what the govs will do, though. They have set the precedent of allowing parody accounts (bjwilson83 protested BJWilson86.86 pretty vociferously, but to no avail).

  6. I resent the “dismissed an idle joke” bit. I would label that low skulduggery and sadly expected. Romney isn’t a great guy.

    His repeated words yesterday hit a brand new low, imo. It’s like dipshit v bad person. The two aren’t even comparable. Romney went from a jerk I wouldn’t vote for in a million years to a despicable human being. For me. YMMV.

    1. I haven’t linked it because it’s being covered by sources too partisan for my liking, but yesterday there was a story out of Boston that the lesbian couple, whose suit legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, had met with Romney when he was governor and gotten a very cold reception. They say he said things like “I didn’t know you people had kids” (in reference to this couple’s adopted eight-year-old daughter), and when asked what they should tell their daughter about why they couldn’t be married, he simply said “tell her whatever you’ve been telling her for eight years.” (Neither of these are exact quotes.)

      If accurate (and his documented coldness makes it believable), he is a mean, selfish motherfucker.

      1. leaving his office, you wouldn’t expect him to brush it off because, eh, they were all icky gay.

        The guy is a jerk with, what I see as, wrongheaded ideas about what belongs in law. OK. But four people died. Normal people take a minute before diarrhea of the mouth sets in. There’s no basic belief involved.

        I see this as different. YMMV.

  7. Never forget what a disaster those 8 years were, cringing at the idiotic blunders of an out of touch man of privilege with no concerns in the world beyond his inner circle.

    I hope anyone who hasn’t decided yet can now see the real goods.

  8. We visited the Colorado Springs Gazette this morning expecting to see a full-throated defense of Romney from reliably pro-Republican editorial board chair Wayne Laugesen; it appears he is still writing it.

    It appears that this fuckup was so big that the spin is taking a loooong time to be… uh, spun.

    I’m really looking forward to the foreign-policy themed debate.

    1. he’s foreign. (Duh.) I love America, you should love America, we need to protect Americans by remaining absolute. Never apologize for American values!

      Could it be it’s not hard to spin, it’s just not worth spinning? I’m all un-cynical still, someone should be around soon to set me straight.

  9. I don’t read their crap, myself, usually, but I know that some blogger’s fringie rightnaut perspective holds more truck with some of the, ahem, conservative commentators on this site more than the sources cited above.

    1. They’re upset that Mitt Romney had the gall to criticize the State Department for a statement that the White House itself disavowed…So the White House can walk away from its own diplomats, but Mr. Romney can’t criticize them?

      Whatever the timing of the Cairo Embassy’s statements, Mr. Romney is right that a U.S. Embassy ought to ignore YouTube videos produced by obscure cranks. As Tuesday’s events showed, pandering to Islamists who would use the video to inflame anti-American sentiment isn’t going to stop the protests. The video “Innocence of Muslims” is inflammatory and its producer is a fool, but in the U.S. we don’t censor fools.

      http://online.wsj.com/article/…

      Dishonest, because no-one suggested censorhship, and obfuscation, because it defends what Romney never said.

  10. Romney’s criticism was based on lie piled upon lie. The original message from the Egypt office wasn’t an apology. And that message was issued before the violence occurred. And it wasn’t Obama’s.

    Romney is a jackal. He will bend the truth when he thinks it’ll help his chances – like claiming his poor dog “loved” to ride on top of his car for 12 hours in June. And his marathon-cheater running mate is no better.

  11. And the MSM is backing away from the Obama genuflection.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/opin…

    Late that night, Romney condemned the thoroughly condemnable embassy press release. In a rapid confirmation of Romney’s wisdom in doing so, the White House threw the embassy’s statement under the bus. But reporters and liberal pundits reacted in collective horror at Romney’s temerity.

    No one should get the vapors over Romney’s critique. Matters of war and peace are inherently political. Does anyone remember the Vietnam War? I’m sure Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon would have loved a rule that put debating it off-limits. Instead, anti-war protesters and politicians are still lionized.

    In 1980, the foreign-policy debate didn’t stop because Americans were held hostage in Tehran. Nor did it stop in 2004 because Americans were fighting in Iraq. One of John Kerry’s ads included the graphic: “2 Americans beheaded just this week.”

    The embassy attacks shine a light on our deteriorating position in the broader Middle East. The signature Obama foreign-policy success has been killing people — Osama bin Laden with a Special Forces raid and a bunch of other al-Qaida terrorists with drones. If that could be the sum total of U.S. foreign policy, we’d be in fine shape. We’re not.

    http://www.usnews.com/opinion/…

    Mitt Romney was right to criticize the administration’s original response to the attacks on our embassies. And the White House knew he was right-based on its own continuing disavowal of the same statement. This controversy was the last thing the White House needed after the Netanyahu fiasco.

    While the administration is right to condemn the obscure video that produced all this violence, it should also make it clear the U.S. government had nothing to do with the video-this one or any others like it. Like it or not, the freedom of speech that allowed this film to be produced in the first place is a right of individuals who live in democracies. In addition to American strategic interests, securing those basic human rights for many oppressed Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq was why the United States went to war there. In the age of YouTube, there are sure to be other incidents like this; the administration’s policy should be first, to condemn violence of any kind and second, to stand up strongly for free speech and other basic human rights in the Muslim world.

    1. Colorado Pols cited three leading newspapers’ own editorial boards.

      You cite a syndicated editorial in the Oregonian (a suck-ass newspaper) by the editor of the conservative National Review. And a former Bush I speechwriter’s editorial in U.S. News and World Report.

      Your examples just are equivalent to Pols’.

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