Romney and the neocons
David Sanger had a piece over the weekend wherein many of Governor Romney's foreign policy advisers griped about being ignored by their candidate:
But what has struck both his advisers and outside Republicans is that in his effort to secure the nomination, Mr. Romneyâ??s public comments have usually rejected mainstream Republican orthodoxy. They sound more like the talking points of the neoconservatives â?? the â??Bolton faction,â? as insiders call the group led by John Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations.
I hate to break it to Sanger but the "talking points of the neoconservatives" are the Republican orthodoxy. Consider Sanger's example of what constitutes as a more "nuanced" critique of the Obama administration:
So far Mr. Romneyâ??s most nuanced line of attack was laid out in the introduction to a campaign white paper last fall written by Eliot Cohen, a historian and security expert who worked for Condoleezza Rice in the State Department, that the â??high council of the Obama administrationâ? views the â??United States as a power in decline,â? a â??condition that can and should be managed for the global good rather than reversed.â? It also alleged a â??torrent of criticism, unprecedented for an American president, that Barack Obama has directed at his own country.â?
The first quote is completely unsubstantiated in the white paper and is also false. But it is a staple of ... neoconservative criticism of the Obama administration.
The second critique is silly - Obama hurt America's feelings! But guess what - it's another neocon talking point.
(To be fair, the entire white paper is better than these quotes would indicate.)
And regardless of what talking points he prefers, it's really pointless to go searching for a Romney doctrine at this point. I suspect Romney leans toward the "Bolton faction" because it produces the best soundbites and the most scathing attacks against President Obama. Whether a President Romney would govern according to the councils of the "Bolton faction" would really depend on factors no one can accurately anticipate today.
