Joe Scarborough, Panel Mock Mitt Romney on Foreign Policy Ignorance

Wow, what a bunch of utter bull****. As Steve Benen puts it:

For those who care about international affairs, Romney isn’t doing a very good job. Trusted reader F.B. flagged this segment from today’s “Morning Joe,” where a panel literally laughed at some of Romney’s saber-rattling towards Iran.

Note, in particular, that the BBC’s Katty Kay said she was “disappointed” by Romney’s remarks on Iran, because she thought he’d have “a more sophisticated understanding” of the issue.

That, in a nutshell, is one of Romney’s key rhetorical problems – he can fake it when it comes to giving the appearance of competence, which raises expectations, but the facade falls apart when anyone stops to consider the details.

And that’s exactly why Joe Scarborough and his panel were laughing at Romney’s utter (apparent) cluelessness, hyper-machismo, idiocy, etc. on foreign policy. Yeah right, the Mitt-ster’s going to single-handedly do what tough guys/warmongers George W. Bush and Dick Cheney couldn’t do – stop Iran from getting nukes. And, as Scarborough points out, how is Mitt-ster going to “take China to the WTO?” Short answer: he can’t and he won’t.

Sadly, as Scarborough notes, Romney is “willing to dumb it down…and say things that are silly, that have no connection with geopolitical realities to get a couple of applause lines.” Heck, even former RNC Chair Michael Steele agrees, Mitt-ster is detached from reality on foreign policy, or at best is pandering to the crowd for cheap applause.

Bottom line with Mitt Romney: he will say ANYTHING, flip flop on ANY position he’s ever held, contort himself and debase himself as much as it takes, as long he gets to be the Republican nominee for president. The question for American voters is simple: do you want someone who is SO desperate to be president, and (apparently) SO clueless on foreign policy, as Mitt-ster apparently is? To me – and apparently to Joe Scarborough et al. as well – it’s somewhere between laughable and frightening.

P.S. On a related note, anyone who argues that “waterboarding” (aka, “simulated drowning”) is acceptable behavior should be automatically disqualified from ever being president of the United States. Pathetically, of the entire Republican presidential field, only no-chance-whatsoever Jon Huntsman and also-no-chance-whatsoever Ron Paul were willing to state that torture is unacceptable behavior by America. The rest apparently don’t understand what our country’s all about.