The Reasons Behind Romney's Colossal Foreign Policy Fuck-Up

One of Romney's favorite anti-Obama talking points is that our President is always apologizing for America.  His campaign decided to revisit this theme after hearing yesterday that the U.S. Embassy in Egypt -- facing protests over an anti-Muhammed movie made by an amateur U.S. filmmaker -- put out a press release stating that "respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy" and "[w]e firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others." 

Even though this statement was released before any embassy attack occurred, Camp Romney saw this as an opportunity to assail Obama after the embassy attacks occurred.  To quote Romney: "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." [Remember -- when the embassy released that aforementioned statement, no attack had occurred yet].  RNC chairman Reince Priebus followed up Romney statement by tweeting: "Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic."

When it was later determined that loss of American lives occurred as a result of the Libyan embassy attack, Romney -- instead of admitting he jumped the gun -- doubled down on his mystifying statement during a press conference this morning wherein he categorized the embassy statement as "an apology for American principles."

Most folks in Romney's position probably would have backed off on the rhetoric, but not Mitt Fucking Romney.  He did, after all, set a trap for himself by -- as the President put it this morning -- engaging in "Ready! Fire! Aim!" tactics.  Romney probably decided to double down on his bullshit attack because to back down from it would make him appear weak.

In any event, Romney is being universally criticized for all of this, and rightfully so.  Even Republicans are fleeing this sinking ship. Peggy Noonan, a conservative author and speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, tweeted this morning: "I don't feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors in the past few hours." And Buzzfeed chimed in with this reporting:

"They were just trying to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy statement and now it’s just completely blown up," said a very senior Republican foreign policy hand, who called the statement an "utter disaster" and a "Lehman moment" — a parallel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 financial crisis, failed to come across as a steady leader."

It's pretty clear why this monumental screw-up on Romney's part occurred. Our current president has a very strong record with regard to foreign policy, and this really bothers Republicans.  Romney's campaign has tried to minimize Obama's successes by referring to foreign policy as a “distraction” and has described the Obama campaign's focus on foreign policy as "going from one shiny object to the next."  Romney's lack of focus on foreign policy has gotten him into some trouble, most recently when he failed to mention the deployment of our troops in Afghanistan during his convention speech and then defended this omission by stating that said troop deployment was not an important issue.

But this is not to say that Romney won't go after Obama on foreign policy if he perceives an opening to do so, even a flimsy one. Last May, Romney attacked the State Department's handling of the situation involving blind Chinese dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng as "a day of shame for the Obama administration."  Unfortunately for Governor Romney, it turned out that he spoke too soon because the Obama people successfully resolved that issue with the dissident.

And this is what happened over the last couple days:  Romney spoke too soon in an attempt to politicize an on-going foreign policy crisis, and now he is getting crucified for his tone-deaf response from all sides.  And that is as it should be.