At their convention last week, the Democrats went out of their way to treat Mitt Romney’s tough talk about Russia as evidence of his unsuitability for the White House. But at least when John Kerry was mocking the GOP candidate, he didn’t cite Vladimir Putin. But when the deputy campaign manager of the president’s re-election effort sought to take a shot at the Republican over his attitude toward China, her source was the official state news agency of the Chinese Communist Party.
Stephanie Cutter has been a prominent spokesperson for the Democrats on cable news channels this year, but she may be taking a slightly lower profile in the future as a result of a tweet in which she linked to a Reuters story that quoted at length an editorial in the Xinhua service that serves as the mouthpiece for the dictatorial Beijing regime. According to Xinhua, Romney is a hypocritical trade war-mongerer. One would think that an insult directed at an American from such a source would be considered to be a badge of honor by most voters, Democrat or Republican, but in the current atmosphere of partisan warfare, Cutter and the Obama campaign seem to think that anyone who has anything bad to say about Romney deserves a pat on the back or at least a re-tweet.
According to Politico, Cutter isn’t retreating on this point and was quoted as doubling down on Xinhua’s accusation that Romney became wealthy from dealing with China and therefore can’t be trusted to get tough with them over trade violations.
This is a weak argument since virtually anyone involved in business in these days is in some degree connected with China. If Cutter’s rules were to apply, no one, save perhaps for community activists and lawyers, would be eligible to discuss relations with China.
But there is something particularly unseemly about a representative of the president’s campaign quoting a Communist rag as an authority about Romney’s position on China. It’s pretty much the moral equivalent of Jimmy Carter’s campaign quoting Pravda as to the inadvisability of Americans voting for Ronald Reagan.
Cutter’s citing of Xinhua tells us a lot about her lack of understanding how China is governed. The wire service is not a source of independent news or opinion but slavishly reflects the views of an authoritarian state that is intolerant of opposing views either at home or abroad.
Just as Russia really is a geopolitical foe of the United States (though not the only or principle one), Romney’s straight talk about China is needed. The Obama administration has spent four years showing us how little they care about human rights. But in one tweet, Stephanie Cutter illustrated the moral blindness that is at the core of their indifference.
Why not? MSNBC freely borrows from Iran's PressTV and bashes al Jazeera for not being anti American enough.
The world wants a weak US President at their own peril. Do the Americans want a weak President? I hope not. nCutter, diverting the attention from the weak Obama economy. It is always the same BS. Not to talk about the economy at any cost. What matters is to keep the power so the far left can transform and destroy this country.
It’s obvious that China prefers to take on an empty chair than have to sweat with Romney at the helm, so they will try and help Obama into a second term.
He has made it so much easier for them to to exert their power.
That Obama and his crew seem smitten with dictators like Chavez, Putin, Khamenei, Morsi, and until recently Assad, should alert voters that something is very wrong with the Democratic Party. But it doesn't seem to make any difference to most voters judging from recent polls. n nThis is alarming, since it points to a rift between Right and Left that is too wide to bridge "politically." The last time this occurred was in 1860. n nIt may be that 50 years of indoctrination via the schools and universities has so distorted and warped the thinking of half of our population, that the other half—conservatives and centrists—will have to fight to retain the United States as a constitutional republic guided by the principles laid down in our founding documents. n nOne thing is clear already: the Republican Party has been gutted and at least on the national level is of no use any longer. We read in this magazine and in the WSJ and other conservative publications, that Mitt Romney should "do this and that," much as the same conservative media did in 2008. Back then it was John McCain who sewed panic in his wake. We all recall the shock of realizing how bad McCain was. n nBut what we've still not admitted is this: that there is a relationship between campaigning and being president. One recalls what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote about Adlai Stevenson re: his being a loser from the get-go. Like McCain, like Romney, Stevenson could not communicate to ordinary Americans. He simply lacked "the common touch," which even our "aristocratic" presidents—Washington, FDR, JFK come to mind—had in abundance! n nHad he been elected, McCain would have been a disgraceful president, just as George W. Bush, another GOP "gift from the dark side," had been for eight long, painful years. Now this guy, Mitt the businessman! We read desperate calls for Mitt to wake up, to speak from the heart, to tell us his "vision," or how he sees America moving forward. Now, after the violence in the Middle East, commentators ask Romney to set our minds at ease to convince us that he can lead get us through unscathed, and that if he cannot that he'll make a heroic and strong wartime president. Something! Anything! Please! n nBut Mitt isn't going to do any such thing. Why not? Because he's Mitt. Nothing. Again, the GOP gives us nothing. n nBut this time it isn't a question of "winning the election." This time, 2012, we're facing the potential for real trouble. We're broke, heavily in debt, and the world is coming apart at the seams—thanks to 12 years of uninterrupted governance below the level of mediocrity. Bush was a fool, and that is giving that admittedly decent and good man far more than he deserves. Why the harsh tone? Because no man has the right to overreach the Bush did. He had no business seeking the office in the first place. The Greeks called it "hubris," what Bush did, in his case a kind of self-appraisal that was horribly wide of the mark, unrealistic, narcissistic to the core. Remember those flip interviews on his campaign bus with attractive female reporters? We should have know then what kind of president he'd be. So my harshness is not the obsessive ranting the Left screamed at Bush during his two terms. It is a justified recrimination for what he did to this lovely country, because he was and remains a man who seems not to know who he is. This is not forgivable in a president, given the stakes! n nAnd Mitt Romney, were he to win the election—what kind of president would he be? The answer is: we already know what kind of president he would be. He is advertising the answer: the way he is running his campaign, the kinds of advisers he has chosen, the folks around him, and the words that come out of his mouth—these are the clearest indications possible of what kind of president Romney would be. n[continued in following comment] n
[continued from above] n nLast, is it enough that he seems to hold a few conservative principles? Should we vote for Romney over Obama on that account? I think we should. But let us be under no illustions when we do vote for him. He cannot given the same "pass" we gave George Bush right after 9/11! That was a huge error on our part. We Republicans stood by Bush and defended his governance. In retrospect, ours was a case of mistaken, frankly disastrous loyalty! Look what Bush did to this nation: Afghanistan, Iraq—nearly 5,000 or our soldiers killed, nearly 40,000 wounded, many of them horribly maimed. And for what? For what we see occurring today? So that "Iraqis can vote?" Tell that to a mother and father of one of those men and women, the dead ones, the ones lying paralyzed for life, the ones who are "cognitively impaired" due to mines or sniper fire. Are we kidding? n nWe say, "But Lincoln bore the same burdens, only more so!" Sure, Lincoln led the nation through a horrible Civil War, one in which hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides were slaughtered, and the cost in civilian casualties and property damage was enormous as well. But the issue was something far different than—"bringing bin Laden to justice" (the sound of which I now find nauseating, in light of what all our dead and wounded has brought us!). The American Civil War was fought over a moral issue so inescapable and so crucial to the future of this nation, that to even speak of the "war on terror" in the same breath is to insult the Union cause and the war itself! n nWe have fought this war on terror badly, inexplicably so. Our enemies must think we are fools, or insane, or emasculated. I don't blame them. When what we should have done after 9/11 is unleash a firestorm on the Moslem world, instead we tried to "bring democracy to the Arabs" and "make Afghanistan safe from the Taliban." As noble as those two causes might sound, history has been exquisitely clear re: fighting land wars in Moslem lands. Not one, in all history, has been worth the cost in lives and treasure—or in the social and political damage suffered in the process. n nOur country is a mess because of those wars, and the Vietnam War, and perhaps even Korea. We fought, not to win, but to prove a point, or to take revenge (remember Bush's infamous "He tried to kill my daddy," answer to a reporter's question as to the justification for invading Iraq?) or to avenge our honor? n nOnly Colin Powell seems, in retrospect, to have understood the issue with clarity: When America fights, it must fight to obliterate the enemy's ability to wage war—physically and psychologically. If that cannot be done, then best to wait until it can! Then fight. But not until, or unless! n nWho in his or her right mind believes Mitt Romney is capable of making these distinctions, of discerning what the world demands from us right now? What have we done, that we find ourselves where we are? And what must we do, starting immediately, to begin the long process required, if we are to ever emerge a healthy, strong and prosperous nation once more?