Romney Shambles Review

Romney Shambles Day One: Disconcerting London Gaffes
Romney Shambles Day Two: British Press Pounces
Romney Shambles Day Three: On to Israel
Romney Shambles Day Four: Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran
Romney Shambles Day Five: Not Too Kosher
Romney Shambles Day Five: Poland
Romney Shambles Day Six: Warsaw Speech
Romney Shambles Review

"Romneyshambles" is a bastardization of the word "omnishambles," which itself comes from a popular BBC sitcom called The Thick Of It. The show, which will air its fourth season this fall, is a black-hearted, profanity-laden satire of UK politics, set in the government's fictional Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship (DOSAC). A typical episode begins when the department's minister or staff makes a huge political blunder, which the Prime Minister's PR enforcer (an acid-tongued Scot named Malcolm Tucker) has to then fix.
. . . but the popularity of the word "omnishambles" didn't really take off until April of this year, when Labour party leader Ed Milliband famously used it to describe Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's budget.
. . . Since then, the word has formally entered the British political lexicon. Scottish journalist Alex Massie even wrote an article for the American magazine Foreign Policy with a title that labels Cameron, "Mr. Omnishambles." Now, with #romneyshambles penetrating American political consciousness, our own political vocabulary just got a little more colorful.
~ From MSNBC



It's been a great trip.
~ Romney Advisor, Stuart Stevens

Is there anything about Romney's Rolling Ruckus that would inspire confidence in his ability to lead US foreign policy?
~ David Axelrod on Twitter

I realize that there will be some in the fourth estate or whatever estate who are far more interested in finding something to write about that is unrelated to the economy, to geopolitics, to the threat of war, to the reality of conflict in Afghanistan today, to a nuclearization of Iran.
They are instead trying to find anything else to divert from the fact that these last four years have been tough years for our country."
~ Mitt Romney to Fox News, blaming the press for covering his gaffes

I don’t know how he’ll handle the head of state job. He’s made a mess of being a tourist.
~ Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago

Who is this klutz, this clodhopper, this lawn sprinkler of national insult? Well, he`s Mitt Romney. Remember him, the guy who promised to restore and upgrade the special relationship with Great Britain and has instead barfed on the Buckingham Palace lawn? The guy who promised to restore peace and security to the land of Israel and has instead managed to raise the level of strife still higher, also the level of fear when his spokesmen said just yesterday that Romney would back Bibi Netanyahu, no matter what he did to Iran, before Romney once again had to walk back his yet another global gaffe.
~ Chris Matthews on Hardball, Monday July 31, 2012

Romney wants to project bold confidence. Instead, he radiates blind certainty. All around the world, people can tell the difference.
~ Eugene Robinson in a Washington Post called "Gaffepalooze"

I tell you, they should call this the moonwalking tour because any time Mitt Romney speaks, he has to then walk backwards while seeming to go forward. You know, how many remarks, you know, can you walk back?
~ David Corn of Mother Jones

Romney is fully in step with the party he leads. Today's Republican Party is characterized by a kind of bellicose ignorance towards the world, contemptuous of Obama's attempts to show respect to foreigners, crudely aggressive towards those deemed the enemies of the US, uninterested in its friends. Take the response of Romney's allies to the London debacle, his surrogates professing that ''we're not worried about overseas headlines'', while one media cheerleader dismissed Cameron as ''limp-wristed'' and Britain as ''a second-rate, semi-degenerate nation''.
~ Sydney Morning Herald

Look, Mitt Romney wondered aloud whether London was ready for the Olympics, and I think it’s clear that voters in this country wonder aloud whether Mitt Romney is ready for the world. And I think the world is not yet ready for Mitt Romney.
Literally to go overseas, stand in the county of our strongest ally — in the Olympics that they had been preparing years for — and question whether or not they’re ready does make you wonder whether or not he ready to be commander in chief.
I thought it was embarrassing for our country.
~ Robert Gibbs quoted in Huffington Post

Mitt Romney, Like Errant Drone Hits Wrong Targets . . .
A drone is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent without a human pilot on board. Its flight is either controlled autonomously by computers in the vehicle, or under or with guidance, typically by remote control.
. . . Mitt Romney’s European tour was intended to bolster his political bona fides but his gaffs are proving him to be a dangerous political drone. Romney’s first target was London.
. . . Romney obviously subscribes to 19th Century columnist John O. Sullivan’s idea that America’s (Anglo-Saxon) success through expansion and exploitation is a result of manifest destiny. He must also subscribe to terms like “American exceptionalism” and former President George W. Bush’s term, “American internationalism”.
The collateral damage from Romney’s attacks could be devastating and long-lasting.
~ Black Star News, New York