sean hannity interviews governor romney:
HANNITY: What do you think about Speaker of the House Pelosi, against the will of the White House, the recommendation of the State Department, is going to Syria to meet with the Syrian president? Is that the wrong thing to do? Does that send the wrong message to the world?
ROMNEY: It’s outrageous. What she’s doing is absolutely outrageous. I’m afraid she has been taking John Edwards’s talk to heart, which is that there are two Americas, one led by the president and the other, which is led by her.
But there is one America. It’s the United States of America. We have one foreign policy. If people don’t agree with that foreign policy, they can elect new leaders. They can elect a new president in two years, and they can pursue a different course.
i love this. governor romney is exactly right, and this is what it boils down to here. congress doesn’t have the role of commander-in-chief. if they want that role, they have to get a democratic president elected. the democrats are in danger of overstepping their constitutional role by any freelance foreign policy they are doing, so speaker pelosi and her bipartisan delegation need to be careful that the United States speaks with one voice to terrorist-supporting states like Syria and Saudi Arabia.
he continues:
But the idea of having the speaker of the House, the third person in line for the presidency, of the United States, being with Assad, being welcomed and given diplomatic coverage, shots of her on TV and the media and the way she’s being used by the Arab press is just outrageous.
HANNITY: Let me go to the issue of Harry Reid earlier this week said, in fact, he would support Russ Feingold’s bill to defund the war in Iraq within 120 days of its passage if, in fact, the president goes forward with his threat to veto the supplemental that was loaded up with pork and, of course, this artificial timetable, as the president says?
How should the president react to that and what do you say to Senator Reid for that proposal? That basically guarantees defeat.
ROMNEY: Well, it’s a terrible idea. And again, I think people are playing politics with foreign policy.
No one likes the fact that we’re still in Iraq. Everybody wants our troops home as soon as they possibly can be home. But people who have studied it very carefully and put politics aside recognize that if we simply withdraw on a precipitous basis, we open a risk of a very substantial nature to America’s interests.
The risk is that Iran, the nation we just were speaking about, grabs the Shia south of Iraq, that al Qaeda plays a dominant role among the Sunnis, that the Kurds destabilize the border with Turkey, and that potentially from any one of these acts that we end up with a regional conflict. And that our friends like Israel get drawn in, and then America has to go back in a far more difficult position.
These are the consequences of improper departure from Iraq, and so we have to make sure that we — we manage to the extent humanly possible this process to maintain order and a decree of stability we don’t let this country to fall in complete and total collapse.
HANNITY: If that were to come to fruition, Iran and al Qaeda would also have the oil reserves in Iraq, which would create the financing as they, you know, basically have a new staging area for terror.
ROMNEY: The people in Congress, and the people of America have to recognize that you’ve got to separate our disappointment and, in some cases, anger with where we are in Iraq. We made a lot of mistakes. Look, this has not been — once we knocked down Saddam Hussein, the war has not been conducted perfectly by any means.
We are, to a certain degree, responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. But as long as there’s a reasonable probability that a pathway exists for us to maintain a central government in Iraq, with a central military, albeit with strong sub-states, that’s a pathway which is in the best interest of America.
governor romney had a very strong interview here, in my opinion. what i’m still trying to understand about romney is why he feels the need to not only support conservative positions like gun rights, but also to insist that he has always been the strongest supporter of those positions. romney’s strengths and weaknesses will always be competing for the public’s attention. rudy guiliani has never been a favorite of the SoCons, but at least he is what he is: a strong supporter of abortion (even public funding of abortions) and gay marriage.
let me pass along some free advice for mitt romney: what conservatives want to know is whether you will do what you say you will do when in office. i think you are trying too hard to sell yourself as the most committed conservative candidate in the field. i’m not sure that this will work for you, based on your past history. we want to be able to trust you. don’t go to extremes to impress us. be who you are. that just might be enough to get the nomination.
tags: mitt romney, ’08 election
So does that mean the Republicans who are there in Syria right now, and those who preceded Pelosi are undermining American foreign policy also?
Not to mention that the Republicans were sent by the White House. It’s not a junket. It was actually ordered by the White House http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2007/04/white_house_criticizes_democra.php
Also I don’t buy into Romney’s support for guns. He joined the NRA in November of 2006. To gun owners like me, that’s not supporting gun rights. And in 1994 Romney was in full support of Clinton’s ban on all assault weapons. The NRA won’t like that none.
I think Romney will climb in the polls, because there really is no real conservative candidate for the Republicans to choose from, but I’m still calling his nomination a long shot. But, hey, if he does get it, I wouldn’t mind seeing someone who’s pro-choice, for gay rights and not a neocon by the Republican contender for a change š
Sorry, that should say “be the Republican contender for a change.” I’ll throw my wink back in there also š
You are trying to pick a fight with me when your argument is actually with Kent. š
Perhaps you missed where I called the delegation bipartisan and merely pointed out that it’s important that representatives of the United States Congress are not undermining the President’s role as commander-in-chief. I’m not backing off from that statement. If Republicans do that as part of Pelosi’s delegation, it’s wrong. If Pelosi and the Democrats try to make deals (which as far as we know, they haven’t yet) with foreign governments independent of the White House, it’s not only wrong, it’s illegal.
Yes, I know that Nancy Pelosi hasn’t crossed that line. But it’s never good to show your enemies that your country is divided on how to handle the threats they pose to the United States and to the rest of the world.
Now to Romney. I think that he is trying too hard to be the most conservative Republican candidate EVER, like I wrote in the post, and he can’t sell that. He’s a great speaker (in my opinion anyway) and he has all the charisma any candidate could ever need, but he keeps getting tripped up by all these important small details and his past history (as you point out). I’m not terribly concerned about the assault weapons ban, even though the NRA would be. That’s a reasonable position to have, I think. Even with all of Romney’s flaws, I still like him much better than McCain and better than Giuliani…but I would vote for Giuliani if it meant keeping Hillary from a return trip to the WH.
Hahaha…you’re good š
But what about in 1997 & 1998 when then Speaker Gingrich and Speaker Hastert respectively, traveled abroad to influence foreign policy and outright bypass President Clinton as Commander in Chief?
The Republicans did try to make deals with China and Columbia on those two different trips. Would that be illegal too?
As for Romney, I agree with you about him being a good speaker and very charismatic. He certainly is both. But if the Dems had a candidate with a track record of flip-flops like Romney has, I would never hear the end of it. Like I said, I wouldn’t mind a pro-choice, gay rights supporter, non neocon coming out of the Republican primary. If he does, it will definitely be a victory for progressives. š
Yes. Read my response to your post. š
John Kerry was real close to becoming President, and he was an infamous type flip-flopper. If John Kerry can overcome it, so can Mitt Romney.
Glad to see that you are calling what the Republican Speakers did illegal also. But, actually, there’s nothing illegal about it.
And I wouldn’t say that Kerry overcame his flip-flopper status at all. He lost and was constantly referred to as a flipflop. Besides, Romeny has fllipflopped way more than Kerry ever did.
I’m surprised at your take on this. I think that under the Logan Act the behavior of both Republican and Democratic Speakers of the House is open to interpretation on whether it’s just wrong or whether it’s illegal. I’m going to back off from saying that Gingrich and Hastert, and also Pelosi, definitely did something illegal. It definitely raises a few red flags for me when a member of Congress doesn’t like the way US foreign policy is being conducted by the administration and then tries to fix it without the official sanction of the President of the United States. It’s like Romney said…if the Democrats want to run foreign policy, then they need to get a Democratic President elected. Otherwise (like it or not), Bush is still in charge.
Kerry overcame the flip-flop charge enough that he got quite a few votes in the general election. He did make it to the end of the race, despite having no noticeable charisma, enthusiasm, and no discernible winning strategy. This won’t be true for Romney. I am not predicting that Romney will make it as far as Kerry did, especially if Fred Thompson jumps in to the race. But Romney has some advantages that Kerry did not have. FWIW, I see the race this way right now: Giuliani, Romney, McCain. Romney can pass McCain, but I don’t know how he passes Giuliani. But if Fred Thompson jumps in, it’s probably over for Romney.
I agree with your second paragraph totally. I see Thompson as changing the landscape entirely.
The first paragraph I’ve answered on my blog and I’m not sure I can say much else. If I do I think I just repeat myself, which I do a lot anyways.
When a Representative, or Senator goes to a foreign government
on assignment from the Administrative Branch, that is different from
somebody going on their own on their own agenda. Congresswoman Pelosi went to
Syria to open talks, as the Speaker of the House, with the dictator, President
Assad. Since US foreign policy, which is the responsibility of the State Department,
not of the Representative from California, is isolation of Syria until that
government changes it’s policies on Isreal and Lebanon. If Syria wanted to
talk, by official State Department policy, they would have to come to us, not
we go to them. Nancy Pelosi has overstepped the constitutional duties of
Congress and crossed the bounderies of separation of powers. Separation of
powers is a means of checks and balances, not a detriment to such. Speaker
Pelosi or any representative, Democratic or Republican, who tries to implement
foreign policy while not doing so on behalf of the State Department should be
censured for violating the oath of office, to “uphold and protect the Constitution
of the United States.
Looking back I guess you guys want to take back that ‘Fred Thompson getting in changes the landscape’ line. He did…but it was like adding a tomato plant to a field of corn. Nobody noticed.
Yeah…that Fred thing didn’t work out too well. I don’t believe I said anything like Fred Thompson would change the landscape of the race. That said, the whole campaign was a massive failure.