Polish Anti-Communist and Nobel Peace Laureate Lech Walesa embraced Mitt Romney’s candidacy during his visit to Poland this week, but later added that Romney has to work a bit on his charisma. Still, it’s a pretty good pickup for the Romney campaign:
“I wish you to be successful because this success is needed to the United States, of course, but to Europe and the rest of the world, too,” Walesa said through a translator. “Gov. Romney, get your success. Be successful!”
The endorsement of a U.S. presidential challenger, unusual in its boldness, was particularly eyebrow-raising in light of Walesa’s refusal to meet with Obama on his visit to Poland one year ago.
Lech Walesa has had a fairly public feud with Obama, so this won’t come as a total surprise. Last month, the White House rejected requests from Polish officials that Walesa accept the President’s Medal of Freedom for the late Jan Karski, who was honored posthumously for his activism with the Polish Underground and testimony about the Holocaust. The reason? Walesa was apparently “too political,” according to the administration. The Nobel Peace recipient has also criticized Obama’s policies and declined to meet with the president during one of his visits to Poland.
But ABC wonders whether Walesa’s endorsement of Romney is also a reflection of Polish feelings toward Obama:
So what impact will Walesa’s embrace of Romney have on the 2012 presidential race? Little, experts say, although it does symbolize a real sense of discontentment among many Poles and Polish-Americans over Obama’s handling of the bilateral alliance during his term.
“This is a powerful statement on Polish relations with the U.S. right now,” Alex Storozynski, president of the Kosciuszko Foundation, a nonpartisan Polish educational and cultural group, said of the Walesa endorsement. “Poles in Poland are frustrated with the Obama administration.”
They certainly have reason to be frustrated. Obama has reneged on missile defense, blindly pursued the Russian “reset,” and failed to honor a campaign promise to add Poland to a list of visa waiver countries. Some of this outrage boiled over recently after Obama’s “Polish death camp” remark. Walesa’s bold endorsement of Romney is only the latest indication of Obama’s declining popularity in Poland.
0ne point deserving note — Polish Americans are POLISH in a way not unlike how Jews are Jewish. Almost all are Catholic, most are Democrat, and let us not forget who Lech Walsea and Solidarity were — 30 years ago but not everyone has forgotten the Polish Pope whom the Communists shot and how Reagan freed "their country" from Soviet rule. n nI remember the fall of 1981. n nThere are significant Polish-American populations in crucial battleground states — not to mention Massachusetts — and the question I ask here is the same as with the Jewish Democrats — at what point will they break loose from the Democratic Party and vote for the Republican? I think we are really close and if Romney could get a significant percentage of the Ethnic-European/Catholic vote, he could actually win Massachusetts which would be unheard of. n nActually, Reagan did it….twice….
Hi, I'm a 38 year old 4th generation Polish Jew. I will NEVER vote for a party who is blatantly working to suppress the HOLY RIGHT TO VOTE like the GOP is. Nothing is more important to me than that…NOTHING. I'm a SOLID OBAMA supporter, and this doesn't change that one bit.
Jeff you need to get the facts. Requiring photo voter iD's have been passed by twenty states and upheld by the Supreme Court in reviewing and upholding the Indiana voter id law by a 6-3 majority in 2008. The states that have passed these laws defer the costs of the id for poor people and voters without the ID's can vote provisionally. These laws are supported by over 70% of Americans. You need a photo id to board a plane, enter a government building, cash a check, by a six pack of beer or a pack of cigarettes. Tell me how anyone thinking person can equate this to "voter suppression"
Even better, we can put pictures on the EBT cards and then let you use your EBT as a voter ID. n nBut Jeff, what you fail to mention is that you can still vote without an ID — it just becomes a "provisional ballot" which they only bother to count if it could possibly make a difference in the outcome of the race, at which point they verify your signature and might even call you up to ask you to come in and swear that it was your ballot. But if you cast 20 of them, I would only swear to the one that is in your real name, as in this case, folks would notice…. n nSame thing with the people "purged" from the voting lists. They too can still vote, it just means their vote is put into a sealed envelope and then into a second sealed envelope with their name on it, and if the election is close enough to matter, THEN they spend the time/money to verify that you actually do live in the district, actually are a real person, actually are alive….
for all the show and dancing around, the Polish Solidarity Movement pushed back on Walesa's hugs and kisses of Romney and reminded its constituents that he, Romney, is a virulent anti-labor tool of the Chamber of Commerce who opposes union rights in the United States just as the Communist dictatorship did in Poland. n nRomney's "love-fest" with Walesa will be noted in passing by a few old souls. And for all the trip to Israel and Poland did for him, he's have been better off visiting his money in Switzerland.
You can't honestly be serious, can you? This is not unlike comparing any one of our modern foul & loud-mouthed antiSemites to the Holocaust — we are talking dimensions of difference here. n nMaybe Mitt Romney closed down an AmPad factory, maybe he didn't — I am quite certain — I like to think that WE ALL ARE QUITE CERTAIN that he didn't line all the employees up and shoot them with machine guns. That had happened in Poland in 1970, only a dozen years prior. Something similar happened two years before that, in 1968, during something known as the "Prague Spring." Then there was Budapest in 1956 where over 2500 Hungarians were killed — that is the one where many in the west saw the Soviets for who they really were, and then there was 1953 in East Germany. n nTo compare Mitt Romney — in any dimension of reality — to the Communists is an insult to those brave people who died under their thumbs. I am at a true loss to understand how anyone could do so in light of the aforementioned. n nNo, I know you probably have never heard of any of these incidents because you were taught that the Soviet Union was a worker's paradise that was destroyed by the evil Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who also are likely personally responsible for union membership in America dropping in 70 years from something like 85% of the workforce to 11.9% last year — and that is only 6.9% of the private sector workforce. Why — well look what happened in Wisconsin when public sector employees had the option of not belonging to the union – MOST QUIT THE UNION. Of their own initiative, because they wanted to. n nSolidarity started as a trade union in a shipyard, but quickly grew to something like a full third of the Polish citizenry — it was far more than a labor union and it is a shame that history isn't taught in American schools anymore…. n nIt actually is kinda scary…. n
Walesa may have backed Romney, but not Solidarity. Polish unions were quick to respond that Walesa does not speak for them.
And Churchill was voted out of office after WW-II.
No one since Reagan, has fully appreciated the freedom loving Polish nation. I am glad there is at least one leader, Romney, who recognizes that there is "no greater ally" than Poland (see book by that name for proof). It was true in WWII during which Roosevelt sold Poland to Stalin as it is today even after Obama chose Russian over Polish interests.