(Re-titled, revised and reposted at my wife's request. She's a liberal who loves her country, but generally she isn't one to get fired up about politics. This ridiculous flub by Romney was one of the exceptions.)
Thank you President Obama, I'd nearly forgotten.
Mitt's response to the murder of our people, including the US Ambassador to Libya, and the sack of our consulate in Benghazi, September 11, 2011, was this press release:
I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. 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.
That outburst started making the rounds a mere 16 minutes after Secretary Clinton confirmed that at least one State Department employee had been killed.
I couldn't believe it then, and I can't believe it now. Has a candidate for President ever done anything so despicable? I'm no expert, but I know that pretty much all the 100 or so people who have made a serious run at the Job have strayed into the gutter; going clear back to Jefferson's day it is an unfortunate tradition that can get very nasty. Historically candidates for President of the United States say and do things that are petty, politicizing, or just plain repulsive.
But has anybody ever done anything like what Mitt Romney said and did? During an unfolding incident involving the deaths of American service-people? He released it so soon after the news broke, a quarter of an hour after Secretary Clinton confirmed the tragedy. God, the idiot sounds so implusive. It was impulsive; a foolish mistake. During the crisis the pretender jumped the shark, big time. See here for a very good timeline of the events and reactions of that day.
I can almost see Mitt grinning a wicked grin as he hatched this plot, while everybody else on either side who knew a damn thing about foriegn affairs were holding their breath.
I bet he was sitting there with a campaign official or two. And I bet they're telling him not to do it; in that flattering and jovial yes-tone shitty managers use to break bad news to a tyrant like Mitt.
But he's so confident, he's so cock-sure. He thinks it's brilliant. So he goes for it.
For my part he lost any hope of ever winning by releasing that statement when he did. If there was any damn justice the fool would've been out on his butt after that.
And I don't think President Obama would disagree. He is a very calm guy, of course, nevermind what the haters think. But no man is without anger. On Tuesday night at the second Presidential debate saw a glimpse of what seemed a highly controlled and slowly simmering anger from Mr. Obama, encompassing this one issue only. It seems as though all other issues, attacks and dogwhistles wash off of him. That one, though.... On that issue things are different. On that day Mitt brazenly politicized the deaths of American servicepeople, in a textbook display of his own perverse strain of foot-in-mouth disease. Who can blame Obama if Mitt's epic-/fail-in-a-crisis sticks in his craw? Seriously. It was an unbelievably foolish and dangerous thing for Romney to do, not to mention un-presidential. If our President is angry about it, I think he's damn right to be.
Mitt Romney really should quit pretending, go back to one of his homes and leave the governing to those who can govern themselves.
Thanks for the reminder, Mr. President, America needed that.
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4 more years.