Keep Romney Away From The Red Phone

"It’s 3AM and the red phone rings with an international crises involving U.S national security. Who would you want to answer that call in The White House"?

[Black Star News Editorial]

What kind of advisors does Republican candidate Mitt Romney have surrounding him?

Imagine how presidential Romney would have appeared on September 11 had he stepped forward and said: “At this hour when America is under attack with our embassy in Cairo being assaulted and the consulate in Benghazi besieged there are no Democrats or Republicans. We all stand together today as Americans. There will be time for politics tomorrow.”

Romney
  decided not to take that honorable path which could have conceivably won him substantial support and even turned the media focus on President Obama: he would have had to field all questions about the attacks.

Romney broke the embargo both campaigns had agreed on–to suspend politics until after the 9/11 anniversary. What was so pressing that Romney could not wait a day to say?

Mitt Romney found it “outrageous” that President Obama, rather than demonstrating U.S. strength overseas –only Romney knows what that means– had been “disgraceful” and quick to “apologize for America’s values” and even “sympathize” with the attackers.

Romney was referring to a statement issued by the U.S. embassy in Cairo, which noted the filmmaker’s right to free speech but also denounced the video for its clear attempt to hurt the feelings of Muslims.

To begin with Romney’s statement was factually misplaced since the embassy’s statement had been issued hours before the attack in the hope to pre-empt it by making it clear that the U.S. government had nothing to do with the making of the video.

And Romney’s attempt to make it appear as if his statement was coming after the attacks on the embassy makes him look worse. It means that even after the U.S. embassy had been attacked Romney’s primary concern  was not to declare that all Americans should stand together but to accuse the president of “sympathizing” with our attackers.

This is an extremely disturbing thought.

Polls show Romney down by 5 points. He’s also down in Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and several battleground states that Romney would have to win.

Was Romney so desperate that he was willing to make the absurd accusation that an American president would sympathize with those who would attack the United States?

Was Romney also appealing to virulent racist among the extreme Right Wing who contend that President Obama is actually a secret Muslim and therefore might have been siding with “fellow Muslims” in Egypt and Libya?

Romney did not just wake up in the middle of the night to issue his abnormal statement.

Only Romney and his advisors know the deliberations that led him to the decision he made on September 11.

If this was the best decision that Romney could make with time for reflection how will he act under a more pressing scenario with national security at stake?

To paraphrase Hillary Clinton’s  famous lines from the 2008 race: “It’s 3AM and the red phone rings with an international crises involving U.S national security. Who would you want to answer that call in The White House”?
 

“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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