Detecting nefarious Kremlin plots lurking behind every Republican bush is dangerous for democracy
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” stated President Obama acidly, publicly mocking Mitt Romney’s assertion that Russia was America’s “Number One geopolitical foe.” The former Massachusetts governor, who had won the Republican presidential nomination, criticized the Obama White House’s “reset” with Russia, which Romney felt had failed, only encouraging Kremlin bad behavior.
In response, Romney was jeered—first by President Obama in a debate on October 22, 2012, then by leading Democrats and their mainstream media echo chamber, which roundly assailed the GOP nominee for allegedly being mired in laughable Old Think. Didn’t Romney, that square, know it’s the 21st century and Obama will “have more flexibility” with Moscow after his reelection?
That was four years ago, almost exactly. It’s time now to admit that Mitt Romney was right and Barack Obama was wrong. The president’s “flexibility” with Russia has meant outsourcing America’s Middle East policy to the Kremlin, while giving Moscow a free hand to steal Crimea and invade Ukraine, plus intimidate Eastern Europe with nuclear saber-rattling. Calling all this a needless geopolitical disaster is charitable.
Nevertheless, four years on, the very same people who assailed Romney’s realism about Russia are hard at work detecting Kremlin plots everywhere, trying to steal the presidential election from Hillary Clinton. Somehow, Vladimir Putin has mysteriously transformed from being a guy we can deal with, no sort of threat, to the devilish figure secretly tearing America apart. What on earth is going on here?
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