Why Romney’s Attack On Obama Is Misguided

I was going to let Romney’s misguided attack on Obama go by without comment; however, Mediaite’s Noah Rothman weighed in, so I thought I’d link that and add my two cents.

… Romney marshalled every ounce of that authority when he mounted a multi-pronged attack on the president’s handling of America’s foreign affairs.

Politically speaking – and Romney’s attack is all about politics – it’s a dumb move regardless of whether Romney is correct or not in his point of view.

I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the American people are interested in an approach to the current situation in the Ukraine other than the relatively weak line Obama seems to be pursuing. In fact, if there were to be some broad public sentiment for a tougher line with russia, or anyone else for that matter, it would fall to Obama as Commander-In-Chief to create it.

As he hasn’t come close to  doing that, there’s no audience one can reasonably expect to be ripe, ready and/or receptive to Romney’s attack. It’s shouldn’t take rocket science to understand that going after a sitting president during an international crisis requires at least some amount of battle space preparation, or at least more than Romney undertook by putting it all together and then framing it primarily as an attack – not a case for rationale for a different approach.

Conversely, he, or surrogates, could have laid a proper predicate for an attack on Obama by first making a strong case for a harder line with Russia, spelling out why it was so critical. But neither Romney, nor anyone else did that first. Simply going on offense against a sitting president during a time of international crisis without some reasonably well understood rationale makes one look petty and feeds into Rothman’s argument.

In short, instead of framing the piece as mostly an attack on Obama, it could have been framed first and foremost as a call for a stronger foreign policy, with any criticism of Obama implied, but not primary, or overdone. That may have been a bit of shrewd messaging leaving Obama looking weak and ineffective without going out of one’s way to say so. But then, as we learned in 2012, messaging has never been team Romney’s strong suit.

Consequently, I think they blew this opportunity and mainly played into Obama’s hands, just as they all too often did when it really mattered back in 2011 and 2012 – at least to the extent anyone outside of the GOP still cares what Romney thinks at this point. I’m not sure anyone really does. He had the platform and plenty of chances to make his case against Obama two years ago. If he couldn’t do it then under those conditions, there’s little reason to think he of all people can achieve it, now.

The post Why Romney’s Attack On Obama Is Misguided appeared first on Riehl World News.