Nobody Reality-Based Has Any Business Supporting Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney's stupidity-and-ignorance factor is just too large for anybody to be supporting him. Here's Spencer Ackerman:

toohotfortnr: real child of hell: Behold! Mitt Romney rides a pale horse. From last night's debate:

But I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there's going to be another and another.Bin Laden is a singular figure, but, you know, fair enough; there will be a successor to bin Laden. But where might Romney be going with this?This is about Shi'a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

Mitt Romney's War: the total conflation of all Islamist movements. Not only is the Muslim Brotherhood not a jihadist organization, but its very lack of jihadiness is what spawned Ayman Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Suffice it to say that there is no caliphate on heaven or earth that will simultaneously satisfy Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, which goes a long way toward explaining why there is no concerted "worldwide jihadist effort" by these groups to establish one.

It's hardly remarkable that Romney doesn't know what he's talking about. In this year's State of the Union, Bush forced the same conflation when he stated baldly, "The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat." What's far more troublesome is that there's absolutely no political consequence for demonstrated ignorance about a jihadist phenomenon that motivates the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- precisely the sort of ignorance that will make the blithe forecasts of a global war expanding over generations a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Perversely, the expanding concept of a global war on all currents of Islamism makes the U.S. appear so much weaker than we are and our enemies so much stronger than they could hope to portray themselves. (What if someone proclaimed a caliphate and everyone rebelled?) Leave it to Bush and Romney to find political utility in a paranoid American declinism.

This is too important to let pass: anybody who wants to be reality-based needs to oppose Mitt Romney, starting now.

Comments

[Barkley Rosser]

I have not seen the actual polls yet, but over on kos they think that Romney won big, except for the big vote for anti-Iraq-war libertarian Ron Paul. It's the blow-dry effect. He looks presidential, and that his comments were full of contradictions and empty air, matters little. The few others who were not completely insane came across as either looking like lumpy sacks of potatoes (Tommy Thompson), or wafflers on abortion (Guiliani, with Romney's complete about-face looking "strong" and "presidential"), or just plain senile and babbling (McCain, who on many issues was joining in with the insane anyway). Actually this crowd made even a wacko like Huckabee look not too far out.

[ogmb]

"anybody who wants to be reality-based"

That's where the problem lies.

[dave]

I'm rather puzzled too at Hezbollah's place in this global jihadist cospiracy: not only is the movement not committed to international jihad, it's even abandoned the goal of an Islamic Lebanon except in the rather unlikely event that an overwhelming majority of Lebanese choose it.

Way to lose a War on... er, just what was it on again?

[Theobald Smith]

Does a tree have the jihadi nature?

[bigTom]

I think its a bit unfair to ream Romney on his changing abortion politics. Although we can't prove it, it certainly is credible that his personal views could have evolved as he describes. I also think it admirable for a leader to be able to compartmentalize between his personel views, and following what the law says his job demands.

Now crazy views of the GWOT (Global War On Terror), this is one area where (un)reality based thinking could get us into even deeper doo-do than we already are.

[Janus Daniels]

"... anybody who wants to be reality-based needs to oppose" every Republican candidate, AFAIK.

[a]

"This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate."

That is absolutely the Moslem Brotherhood's objective and Romney was absolutely correct and reality-based in pointing it out.

[baileyman]

"It's hardly remarkable that Romney doesn't know what he's talking about." Wrongo. Like most of these birds he knows exactly what he's talking about. This is what he says in order to win. He'll do anything to win or to be first. Doesn't matter to him. Either is fine. Anything else will not do.

It's like, "how could these guys be so incompetent running the war?" Nope. We're stuck there forever. That's where they want to be. That's not incompetent for their interests. Similarly Romney.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

I think we all dream of a past that never was.
The Islamic world is divided, and most likely beyond past divisions, between a return to past glory and religious perfection and those who are tired of being poor. There is also a division between those who advocate a battle against the near enemy those who advocate battling the far enemy. That is what I picked up on over at Juan Coles place. So there may be a little truth in everyone's perception of the goals of the Islamists.
I don't watch these debates as, for certain, someone will say something stupid in a sound bite manner. In this format there is no time to amplify or explain or inform or engage the intellect of the listener.