Thursday, April 23, 2009

What bothers Romney (and the rest of us)...

Swampland, Chicago Tribune
by Mark Silva

Obama 'looking for sea legs:' Romney

Mitt Romney says he's glad that President Barack Obama goes to bed each night worrying about how to keep the nation safe - that's the way former President George W. Bush went to bed, Romney suggested, the way all presidents should.

Never mind that Bush turned in a lot earlier.

What bothers Romney, the Republican former governor of Massachusetts who sought his party's presidential nomination, is what else Obama has been doing in the past few weeks:

"I'm concerned that over the last several weeks, the president has been in a Summit of the Americas, as well as being in Europe, and in each case he has not risen to defend America or to defend freedom,'' Romney said, in an interview aired on CNN's Situation Room [watch video] today. "Instead, he has seemed to join into what Charles Krauthammer called the mea culpa tour, looking at ourselves and criticizing America, particularly when Daniel Ortega takes America to task for trying to overthrow Castro.

"That was an opportunity for the president to stand up and boldly defend freedom and democracy, and to chastise Cuba for not having provided those kinds of freedoms to its own people,'' Romney said.

"This is a president who I think is still looking to find his sea legs in this regard to make sure that he can stand to defend the purposes of freedom,'' he said. Of Obama. "He is the leader of the free world, and that has a responsibility which goes beyond just talking about our own mistakes...

"The bigger concern on my part is that there have been two momentous events in the last several months of a foreign policy nature,'' Romney said. "One is the testing of a long-range missile by North Korea, and the other is the announcement by Ahmadinejad of Iran that they have mastered all the steps necessary to enrich uranium.

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