Romney’s WE ARE APOLOGIZING TO EVIL MUSLIMS bullshit only appeals to a small, crazy portion of the Republican base. If he wants Pam Geller’s complete support, he’s probably got it now. But it’s a complete departure, even from the fairly neocon-influenced ways of the Bush administration:
Bush’s spokeswoman said Tuesday (in 2008) that the president apologized during a videoconference Monday with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who told the president that the shooting of Islam’s holy book had disappointed and angered both the Iraqi people and their leaders.
“He apologized for that in the sense that he said that we take it very seriously,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. “We are concerned about the reaction. We wanted them to know that the president knew that this was wrong.”
I am not a fan of the Bush administration’s foreign policy or its general rhetoric. But they were careful to show tolerance and respect for others’ religions, the same way the Obama administration has.
The Romney cheap-shotting here does fall squarely outside the Republican establishment’s mainstream.
And this goes to my real fears about Romney as a president. He may be a pragmatic moderate at heart, politically (his past in Massachusetts indicates that he is), but his willingness to cater to the lunatic fringe of his party should trouble everyone.
different-church-lady
How many electoral votes does Geller have?
Comrade Dread
From my understanding, it wasn’t even an official US response, it was more of the embassy staff in Cairo trying to defuse the situation.
If I’m surrounded by an angry mob, I’m going to tell them that I understand their anger and take their feelings quite seriously if only so it doesn’t escalate to folks breaking in the gates or firing on the compound.
reflectionephemeral
“The Romney cheap-shotting here does fall squarely outside the Republican establishment’s mainstream.”
I can’t agree. The Chair of the RNC seems to think exactly the same thing as the Romney campaign.
And sure, you have a quote from the Bush Jr. administration behaving in a grown-up manner; but that’s from 2008. I could find quotes from Republicans in 2008-2009 supporting cap and trade, the health insurance individual mandate, Keynesian stimulus, the DREAM Act, etc. All those statements are no longer operative.
Of course you’re right that Romney’s probably merely imitating a crazy person, but it seems to me that his judgment of his party’s craziness is quite accurate.
kindness
TeaHaddists (and Romney) need an ‘Allah Akbar’ catch phrase. It isn’t shocking how close these two sectors are. ie conservatives and radical Islam.
amused
The Bushies have to be pretty happy right now what with this tragedy forcing their fatal incompetence concerning 9/11 off the front page.
Anoniminous
Romney is not a “pragmatic moderate.” He’s a sociopath.
schrodinger's cat
I am no great fan of Bush’s but I remember that one of the first things Bush did after 9/11 was to go the mosque in Washington DC. This crew makes Bush look like an angel.
srv
While I realize it’s just too much fun for y’all to beat up Moronically Inapprpriate Mittens, you might want to think about the big picture.
Libya, Irag, Egypt and a future MB Syria are, and will remain hostile to US interests. Mursi is wiping out his opposition and can’t be bothered to apologize. In fact, this event is going to bolster his internal support. Maliki is arresting his opposition.
It’s fine Mittens is a jackass. I guess for most of you, that’s a good excuse to distract you from a FP that is coming up with nothing.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
__
Romney “caters” to the lunatic fringe of his party in the same sense that anyone of the male gender would be inclined to “cater” to a large and angry person who had a very frim grip on their testicles.
DougJ
@srv:
What would you suggest the US do?
Gin & Tonic
@srv: Feel free to propose an alternative.
Bob2
You might want to look closer at everything that wasn’t RomneyCare in MA DougJ
The Moar You Know
@srv: Mursi’s behind the whole thing. at least the Egypt end of it. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Egypt has a really good secret police force, they knew about this well in advance.
The US needs to pull all staff out of both Libya and Egypt and close both embassies. We are flirting with Iran 1979 every day that we don’t. I might remind you where that incident took our domestic politics.
I agree with you in this: I don’t give a shit about Romney’s self-dick stomping at this point. We have a very dangerous situation here, and I’m not sure that our government has a handle on just how bad it is. I hope they do.
chopper
@Comrade Dread:
exactly. as i said in the other thread, if tough-guy mittens had been in the same situation he’d have been begging for his life, or at least burning his magic underwear in solidarity with the mob.
BGinCHI
The reason he was a moderate in MA was that it was MA.
He morphs to suit his environment.
burnspbesq
OT, but quite outrageous, from the “Crime Pays” department:
Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS banker who blew the lid off the bank’s facilitation of tax evasion by wealthy Americans, has gotten a $104 million whistleblower award from the IRS.
From Jeremiah Coder’s article in this morning’s Tax Notes Today:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9537375/UBS-whistleblower-Bradley-Birkenfeld-paid-104m.html
Gin & Tonic
Doug’s faster than me.
chopper
that’s one of the things that is so shitty about mittens’ response here.
these guys in the embassy were scared shitless. anybody would have been. mitt would have been. yet mitt, a guy who has led a super-privileged life, who dodged vietnam to ride a bike around the south of france, basically calls them weaklings with that oh-so-smug smirk on his face. woah, real tough guy there amirite?
this guy is just straight-up dogshit.
Nickws
@DougJ:
Apparently, deciding to conflate the Muslim Brotherhood with ‘Irag’ (honestly, which one?) is the first step to realistically admitting America has a problem in the Middle East.
Is srv a graduate of Beck U?
srv
@DougJ: Stop pretending freedom or courtesy bombs are a replacement for A FP.
Stop trying to overthrow Assad for another. Stop giving Mursi billions. You do know he wants more, don’t you?
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/12/eu-egypt-idINL5E8KCEGI20120912
Also, don’t greenlight tossing the Egyptian generals. Next up, American tourists getting kidnapped. Threats to close the Suez for US ships. This is not even the beginning.
Paula
@srv:
What the hell does any of this mean? You sound like you crawled up the ass-end of Democracy Now! and ended up in Fox News-land.
Maude
@Paula:
Next stop, Uranus.
The Ancient Randonneur
He didn’t have access to the nuclear codes as Governor of Massachusetts.
Ruckus
Steve Benen’s post on Maddow this morning about diplomacy had this last line:
Or more to the point, if there’s a Romney administration, will he refuse to engage in this kind of diplomacy?
That answer – Of course he will, he’s the CEO, he makes all the decisions. Wait, wait, I think, didn’t we already have a decider? Why yes, yes we did and I’m so glad that worked out so well.
The Moar You Know
@Paula: srv is being realistic. The world just changed, and there’s a new set of rules. Failure to observe those rules will get you killed, or can drag your nation into the abyss of war.
Our foreign policy of “democracy at any price” – a policy begun under George Bush and continued under Obama, with the very best of intentions (it works well for us, it’ll work well for them) ended up with the destruction of Iraq as a secular state and has turned it into a theocracy where the losers of the democratic exercise are being murdered or forced to leave the country – if they’re lucky.
Afghanistan, same thing.
Libya, same thing.
Egypt, same thing.
Syria will be the same thing if Assad is taken out.
You’d think we’d learn from four failures in a row. I hope we have. Signs point to that hope being futile.
burnspbesq
@The Moar You Know:
The people of those countries are getting what they want. Oddly, I thought that respecting other countries’ sovereignty and legitimate claims to self-determination was a good thing.
Put another way: we can’t even run our own fucking country, why should anyone be looking to us for advice on how to run theirs?
Put yet another way: after electing George W. Bush twice, we’re hardly in a position to criticize any other country for making stupid choices in free and fair elections.
burnspbesq
OT: Steve Jobs is reaching out from the grave and raping my credit card.
Paula
@The Moar You Know:
Uh, did you read the same thing I did? He wants the US and the EU not to give Egypt gov’t any more money, but apparently he thinks we can still dictate whether or not Egypt’s America-sponsored military is still in power.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@srv:
We’re just reaping the benefits of 50 years of mideast policy, whether it’s installing the Shah or supporting Saddam Hussein in the ’80s or knocking over Saddam Hussein government in 2003 or standing beside Israel as they treat the Palestinians like animals etc., etc., etc. The US has a positively Midas-like touch when it comes to the ME in that everything we touch turns to shit.
So what do we do? Honestly, we bug the fuck out. That’s pretty much the only option left at this point.
srv
@Paula: Obviously, you can’t do timelines any more than Mitt can.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/08/14/232191.html
Obviously, we have no influence and should give money before, during and after. Derp.
The Moar You Know
@burnspbesq: Precisely my point. They wanted theocratic tyranny and that’s what they’ve got. Maybe we shouldn’t “help” them achieve that.
Or as Pat Lang put it so nicely on his blog, their ideal of democracy is “one man, one vote, one time”.
The Moar You Know
@Paula: Yes. You arrived at a wrong conclusion.
Violet
Yes, this. He will do anything to become President. He doesn’t want to do the work of the job, but he wants the title. He’s like Palin.
Darkrose
Or not. A “pragmatic moderate” wouldn’t dream of dealing with even people he disagrees with like this:
“I looked him in the eye as we were leaving,” recalls Goodridge. “And I said, ‘Governor Romney, tell me — what would you suggest I say to my 8 year-old daughter about why her mommy and her ma can’t get married because you, the governor of her state, are going to block our marriage?’”
His response, according to Goodridge: “I don’t really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don’t you just tell her the same thing you’ve been telling her the last eight years.”…
“I really kind of lost it,” says Goodridge. “I’ve never stood before someone who had no capacity for empathy. It went behind flat affect. It was a complete lack of ability or motivation to understand other people.”
While Goodridge cried, Romney brought the press into his office to give his take on the meeting.
He described it as, “Pleasant.”
There is something deeply wrong with that man.
Paula
@The Moar You Know:
What conclusion was that? That he sounds like a Fox News moron?
What other conclusion am I going to come to when some random person starts frothing about Americans being executed?
Whatever: say what you mean and mean what you say. If you’re arguing that there’s gonna be blowback, why don’t you just say: there’s gonna be blowback; I want the US out of there no matter what because there’s a lot of instability in the region and a lot of people who dislike the US who want take advantage of that instability.
Which, for record, is an opinion I share. Because it’s an opinion I share, I don’t actually want it to sound like Fox News worldwide Muslim conspiracy bullshit.
Bruce S
I don’t think Romney’s record in MA is an indication that he’s a pragmatic moderate. I think – in context – it’s the foundation of accumulating evidence that he’s a cravenly opportunistic careerist whose personal ambition trumps everything else. Watching his performance today – along with wing man Priebus – has made me loathe this POS to his very core. Which, of course, is empty.
priscianusjr
Gopher2b
He’s not a pragmatic at heart. He will do whatever he thinks he needs to do to check the next box. Right now, it’s become President. If he wins, the next box will be a two term President and/or wartime President. He’s pure evil.
Nylund
Mitt’s tactics on this won’t win over any new voters. It’s just red meat to the base. My theory is Mitt knows he’s going to lose. He also knows that when he loses, the GOP base will blame it on Mitt not being a “true conservative.” It’ll be the standard, “conservatism can’t fail, it can only be failed,” rhetoric (aka the “No True Scotsman” argument). Mitt doesn’t want to be the “false scotsman” here. He’s going to go full wingnut so that after he loses, he can say, “It wasn’t my fault. I did exactly what you crazy mofos wanted me to do.”
If he goes full birther sometime between now and election day, I’ll take that as absolute proof that I’m right.