American Consulate Attack in Libya

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by tantalizingfemme

I am so disgusted that rather than take the first moment to focus on the real tragedy of the situation, the death of Chris Stevens and others, the focus is on political bashing.

Shame on not just Romney, but a lot of the media. I saw more coverage on the idiocy of Romney than I did on the true victims of this horrific act.

I'm going to take a somewhat contrary take because what Mittens did was so entirely outside the norm of American presidential politics . There are three, more or less, unspoken but well-understood consensus rules in national politics and they are these:

1. We have one President at a time and so one foreign policy at a time.
2. Politics stops at the water's edge.
3. You don't play politics with the lives of Americans killed overseas.

Mittens broke all three of those rules and he did so in the most craven and mendacious fashion. This isn't a matter of 'both sides do it'. I'm a politics junkie and I've watched every national election since 1980 with fanatical interest. In those three decades, I have never seen a major party candidate jump up and try to make foreign policy from the campaign stump by contradicting the sitting President and/or the Secretary of State. Yet, that is what Team Romney did last night.

As the consulate in Benghazi was under attack, Team Romney claimed that the POTUS sympathized with the attackers. While there were still protesters on the grounds of the embassy in Cairo, Team Romney criticized the embassy staff for a tweet that was sent out before the protests even started. That is a particular kind of scummy behavior. I think it is entirely right and proper that Mittens et. al. are pinned in the klieg lights of the media a startled squirrel on a country road seeing its last few moments of life barreling toward it.

Up until yesterday morning, I wanted Mittens to lose and lose badly not because of him but because of his party. I wouldn't have said that he didn't *deserve* the office of the Presidency, just that I didn't think he should be or would do a good job. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, however, Mittens showed himself undeserving of the Presidency. His lack of judgment and his utter disregard for consensus American values makes him unworthy of our trust. Utterly and completely unworthy.

Cheers
Aj