Romney walks into a forearm shiver.
Mitt Romney has picked a big fight fraught with political risks amid an ongoing foreign-policy crisis with heartbreaking and murderous consequences for the U.S. diplomatic corps.
And by the end of the day on Wednesday, he walked straight into a forearm shiver from the commander-in-chief—one that may leave a mark and intensify scrutiny of Romney’s foreign-policy qualifications.
“Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first, aim later,” President Obama told CBS News in an interview conducted by correspondent Steve Kroft. “And as president, one of the things I’ve learned is, you can’t do that. It’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts."
When Kroft asked Obama if he was accusing Romney of being irresponsible, the president said: “I’ll let the American people judge that.”
Romney and his entire team dug in amid criticism from Democrats and public second-guessing in some Republican quarters about the wisdom of using a foreign-policy crisis that left four Americans dead to initiate a broader debate with Obama on his post-Arab Spring policies. The core of Romney’s criticism was that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo sought to appease menacing protesters threatening their compound and did not immediately denounce them or Libyan protesters after U.S. diplomatic territory in both nations was compromised.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/amid-foreign-policy-crisis-romney-picks-a-big-fight-20120912