Muddle East

I don't know what I can say in criticizing Mitt Romney's attempt to get political traction out of the breaching of the U.S . Embassy in Egypt out of anger over an American film mocking Islam and the prophet Mohamed and the subsequent terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate that killed killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens, because folks like Martin Bashir and Chris Matthews have already done it for me.  When the embassy in Cairo sent out a communique attempting to discourage the denigration of Islam with tactics like this film (which includes an interview with loony pastor Terry Jones), Romney bashed President Obama for "sympathizing" with terrorists, as did Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on Twitter . . . even though the White House hadn't cleared the communique (and no attacks had happened yet).  The Obama administration moved quickly to denounce both the breaching of the embassy in Cairo and the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, after Stevens and three other Americans were killed.  I more or less expected Romney to criticize the President for failure to prevent the attack, if only because Republicans will always try to deflect any and all blame for anything to their opponents, but I wouldn't have expected Romney (or Priebus) to dismiss Obama as an apologist for American values at a tense moment in the Middle East.  In fact, it was the interim Libyan leadership that went out of its way to apologize to the U.S. for the killing in Benghazi. 

Romney's inability to square himself with the facts means that, as President, he could get us into a war over a misunderstanding.  That's more or less how the United States and Great Britain went to war with each other two hundred years ago in the War of 1812, but back then news traveled slowly and by ship or stagecoach.  What's Romney's excuse here?  The good news is that few if any Republicans are standing by him. 

Can Romney still win the White House? Well, only an idiot would vote for him at this point. Which is to say, it's still very possible.