I am feeling a bit scandal whipped by the many revelations about the Obama administration which were airbrushed during the campaign of 2012. And, I am full of remorse now, more than ever, for the loss of Mitt Romney, and at a loss about what can save our nation and the Republicans in 2016.
A good primer and a great read is Gabriel Schoenfeld’s book. This is not one of the myriad “sore loser” brickbats that were hurled at Mitt Romney after the devastating loss. This is a serious accounting of what went wrong and how it determined the outcome.
Gabriel Schoenfeld was intimately involved in the campaign as a senior adviser. His essays on national security and modern history have appeared in leading publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Weekly Standard, New Republic, Atlantic, National Interest, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Commentary, where from 1994 to 2008 he was senior editor. His books include: A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider’s Account; Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law; and The Return of Anti-Semitism.
Those of us who cheered at Romney’s knock out of Obama in the first debate when it was about the economy, were buoyed and confident that in succeeding debates, particularly on foreign policy Romney would triumph. Instead, we cringed when he flubbed the debate on what should have been his strong suit. But now what?
I posed the following question to Gabriel Schoenfeld:
“In the book you site the awkward handling of the anniversary of 9/11 in the Romney campaign…..particularly in light of the evolving protests in Cairo and Benghazi as being critical.I am persuaded that Romney got some awful advice but what we know now …leaves me perplexed and wondering what moves one can make in preparing for 2016.
Given that now we know the lies and obfuscations and negligence of those events which were kept from us…and candidate Romney, do you think the outcome could have been different?
Much of this is out since your book was completed….Have you any second thoughts?”
His answer:
“The revelations about Benghazi that have appeared since my book was locked into type four weeks ago only serve to confirm its thesis. The Obama administration made multiple mistakes before, during, and after the Benghazi episode and it took monumental misjudgment for the Romney campaign to turn an Obama vulnerability into a Romney vulnerability. But that is what happened on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.
I am certainly not arguing that the campaign’s mishandling of this episode cost Romney the election. But politics is a dynamic thing. And if Romney had managed to raise the issue effectively, it would have provided at least an opening, a way for him to change the momentum of a race that was turning against him. The things we have learned over the last few weeks only confirm that this was a missed opportunity. The administration, for a variety of reasons, intra-bureaucratic and political, was misrepresenting what happened in Benghazi. If Romney had handled this deftly, he would have been able to score somewhat more in the second and third debate. As it was, he was unable to talk effectively about the fiasco. The campaign also told the RNC to stand down with a highly effective ad that explained Benghazi to the public in readily digestible sound bites coupled with vivid images. The big lesson for 2016: it is folly to ignore foreign policy–which is what the Romney strategists deliberately attempted to do. When a crisis occurred, they were woefully ill-equipped to deal with it. “
READ THE BOOK….74 PAGES THAT PACK A POLITICAL PUNCH FOR THOSE WHO CARE DEEPLY ABOUT THE NEXT ELECTION.
A Bad Day On The Romney Campaign: An Insider’s Account [Kindle Edition]
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