The Americans among you may have been following the flap surrounding the decision of Romney campaign spokesperson Richard Grenell to resign. Briefly, Grenell is an out gay man who for some years was far rightwing neo-con John Bolton's second in command at the U.N. Grennell was chosen by Romney to be the voice of the campaign on foreign policy matters. This provoked an enormous outcry on the christianist homophobic right, led by talk show host and preacher Bryan Fischer. Grenell arranged a conference call to give the campaign an opportunity to express Romney's foreign policy views to the press, but at the last minute, the campaign asked Grenell not to speak on the conference call! They suggested he "lie low" for a while. Grenell, by the way, who seems to have a rather wicked sense of humor, scrubbed eight hundred tweets from his Twitter account, including one that asked "Does Callista [Gingrich] snap on her hair?" Grenell, understandably irritated at being mufled by the campaign, resigned whereupon Fischer declared his departure a "huge win" for the Right. This in turn prompted an outpouring of comment from the left blogosphere and cable news media, the main thrust of which was, "If Romney can't even stand up to Bryan Fischer, how is he going to stand up to the North Koreans and the Chinese?"
Now, Fischer has said the following on his radio show: "... if Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, coopted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me?"
This is the right wing talk show host talking! I can foresee a very strange political campaign unfolding.
It's certainly possible that Romney will win, but much like with Bush's re-election against Kerry's "opposition," the DLC and RNC seem to be setting the stage for a more efficient transition to Obama's second term.
ReplyDeleteHaving Romney make big, obvious "mistakes" like this will give "American conservatives" something to blame their losses on as they look forward to the 2016 contest. As long as they can partly blame themselves for "not picking Gingrich" or "not being conservative enough," it'll keep them in the game.
You should take this as heartwarming news, Mr. Wolff, as it foreshadows Obama's victory later in the script.
In the early fifties, it seemed the only safe place to be a gay American was in Joe McCarthy's office staff. It's almost funny to find John Bolton provided that same haven inside the GOP.
ReplyDeleteAs one member of a religious minority challenges a member of an ethnic minority for the Presidency of the United State, one might naively expect that matters of civil liberty would present common ground. Politics isn't that simple here.