Mitt Romney’s campaign strategy is fairly simple. He can’t afford to dive too far down the tea party rabbit hole because that would hurt his chances in the general election, but he still needs the tea party vote in the primaries. So instead of flat taxes and electrified fences, he tries to appease them with absurdly over-the-top criticisms of the Great Satan himself, Barack Obama. Here’s how this worked today, in his reaction to Obama’s announcement that all U.S. troops would withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year:
President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women. The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government. The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq.
Well, the naked political calculation was that instead of withdrawing American troops by the end of 2009, as he originally said he’d do, he agreed to follow the timeline negotiated by….George W. Bush in 2008. And talks over troop immunity failed because the agreement negotiated by — yes, George W. Bush in 2008 — cut off immunity at the end of 2011 and the Iraqi legislature flatly refused to consider extending it. And finally, the opinion of the military commanders in Iraq is, I’m pretty sure, adamantine: no immunity, no troops. Admiral Mike Mullen made this clear a couple of months ago when he — not Obama — insisted that troops would stay in Iraq only if they were (a) given immunity from local prosecution and (b) the immunity agreement was approved by Iraq’s parliament.
So Mitt is being a horse’s ass here. Still, as a campaign strategy it’s not bad. And his decision not to try to out-wingnut the wingnuts was vindicated by Michele Bachmann’s statement, which said that not only should we have stayed in Iraq, but we should have “demanded that Iraq repay the full cost of liberating them given their rich oil revenues.” Even Dick Cheney never went that far.
