One of my favorite moments from the six Republican debates thus far came in May, when Mitt Romney tried to explain how he perceives threats to the U.S. from the Middle East: “This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. They also probably want to bring down the United States of America.”
It seemed to impress the Republican faithful — and The Note touted how remarkable the answer was — but it didn’t make a lot of sense. Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda, for example, have nothing to do with one another. The latter is a terrorist organization; the prior has renounced violent jihad and, in some countries, participated in elections. Romney was articulating a national security strategy that conflates groups, sects, and agendas that have nothing to do with one another — but he was saying it in such a way as to make it sound like he was informed.
It’s exactly this kind of thinking that led to this ad, which may very well be the single dumbest commercial of the year, at least so far. (via Matt Yglesias)
For those of you who can’t watch video clips, the ad features Romney saying the following: “It’s this century’s nightmare, Jihadism — violent radical Islamic fundamentalism. Their goal is to unite the world under a single Jihadist caliphate. To do that, they must collapse freedom-loving nations like us. As President, I’ll strengthen our intelligence services. Increase our military by at least 100,000. And monitor the calls Al-Qaeda makes into America. And we can stop and will stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. I’m Mitt Romney and I approved this message.”
It’s a bit like the debate — Romney tries to come across as knowledgeable, but ends up not making any sense at all.
I don’t doubt that the ad tested well, particularly with a conservative audience. Romney hit all the hot buttons, the ad shows him shaking hands with a soldier, and if your only outlet to the world is Fox News, the ad probably sounded quite persuasive.
But that’s exactly the problem. It’s strikingly ignorant.
I recently explained that some portions of the conservative movement are genuinely convinced that we’re this close to a global Islamic theocracy. It’s utterly absurd — as Yglesias put it, “The idea that we should be laying awake at night afraid that a group of at most several thousand people who control almost no territory or valuable military equipment might establish a universal caliphate or ‘collapse freedom loving nations like us’ is ridiculous.” And yet, that’s the basis for a campaign ad from a top-tier Republican candidate.
Indeed, notice the ad talks about terrorists “collaps[ing] freedom-loving nations like” the U.S. How is that even possible? Romney doesn’t say, but if we vote for him, he’ll prevent it. Please.
And what does this have to do with Iran? Nothing, but Iran is in the Middle East, and when trying to sucker the far-right GOP base, that’s all that matters.
As Kevin noted, there’s nothing serious about this style of campaigning: “There are no actual proposals or serious thoughts here. It’s just a puerile contest to see who can stuff the most World War IV bullets into a single 30-second spot.”
And Republicans wonder why we can’t take them seriously on national security.