SMRs and AMRs

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The chameleon on the stump

What Romney’s moderation conceals

By Harold Meyerson, WashPost, Tuesday, October 23, 6:47 PM

Any resemblance between the Mitt Romney of recent weeks and the Romney of the primary season isn’t coincidental; it’s an oversight on the part of his managers, who have proven more adept at Etch a Sketching away the Romney of spring than many imagined was possible.

The Romney who showed up for the third presidential debate Monday night was, by design, the challenger as milquetoast. With both candidates fighting hard for women’s votes, Romney was determined to avoid anything remotely bellicose in his approach to foreign affairs and his interactions with President Obama. He extolled Wilsonian ends — championing democracy in the Middle East rather than sticking with pro-American tyrants — while eschewing interventionist means that could put Americans in harm’s way. This was a necessary reassurance to war-weary voters who feared that a Romney presidency would mark a reversion to the Republican interventionist norm, to the avid and unnecessary war-making of George W. Bush and the knee-jerk bellicosity of the last GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain.

In fact, Romney’s foreign policy didn’t sound significantly different from Obama’s on Syria or China — and he actually avoided Libya. His newfound moderation on foreign affairs is of a piece with his turn away from hard-right themes that began just after the Republican convention. His choice of Rep. Paul Ryan, the emerging leader of American libertarian conservatism, as his running mate seemed to foreshadow a campaign centered on the dreams of the radical right — scrapping Medicare, dismantling regulations and the welfare state. It hasn’t turned out that way.

Rather than confront Americans with a macro-shift in policy that they don’t want, Romney has focused on blaming Obama for the state of the economy and promising better times on the basis of the most vacuous, undefined economic policies we’ve seen since — well, since McCain, who had no economic policies to speak of.

(More here.)

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