Mitt's bizarre campaign statement: If Mitt is wrong, how come...!!! (updated)

[ProSense]

Romney camp issues yet another pathetic justification for playing politics with Libya killings

by Laura Clawson

The Romney campaign's desperate flailing to justify its statements on the killing of American diplomatic staff in Libya grew a little more desperate and flaily on Wednesday afternoon with this:

"If Gov. Romney 'jumped the gun' why were White House officials also distancing themselves from the statement?" Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement. "Why didn’t President Obama take any questions from the press this morning to explain?"

This is so bizarre it's difficult to know where to start. Let's turn to the Romney campaign's initial statement:

I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

Here, the Romney campaign is describing a statement released by embassy staff in Egypt hours before the protests started and more than 12 hours before it was made public that Americans had been killed as "the Obama administration's first response" to the killings. You can't respond to something you don't know will happen.

It's also a major stretch to characterize a statement put out by embassy staff as an official Obama administration response. Especially when it was put out before the events in question, but even otherwise. Embassy staffs don't issue the first official responses to events of national importance. You want to know what the official Obama administration response to the killings was? The one that came after they actually happened? It was the one by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, that's what it was. The one where she said:

I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack. <...>

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.

And after that, there was the one from President Barack Obama, who said, "I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens."

As for why the president didn't take questions from the press Wednesday morning, given that Mitt Romney had just personally doubled down on the previous night's statement, to near-universal disapproval, if he had taken questions, they would have been about Romney. Not taking questions was the only possible way for Obama to avoid politicizing his own response to the situation. And because he's a much, much better president than Romney could ever hope to be, Obama did avoid that.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/12/1130933/-Romney-camp-issues-yet-another-pathetic-justification-for-playing-politics-with-Libya-killings

Mitt is either out of his league or out of his mind or both!

"If Gov. Romney 'jumped the gun' why" = EPIC FAIL sqaured

Updated to add this from Steve Benen:

<...>

It appears the Romney campaign is confused. Perhaps I can help focus matters by asking simple, straightforward questions they can answer at their leisure.

* Does Romney realize that the embassy condemned anti-Muslim propaganda before protests turned violent? If so, why has Romney lied about it?

* Can Romney defend the charge that the "Obama administration's first response" was "to sympathize with those who waged the attacks"?

* Can Romney defend the charge that Obama administration officials "apologized for American values"? If, in Romney's mind, criticizing anti-Muslim propaganda is implicitly the same thing as "apologizing for American values," why did the Romney campaign echo the Obama administration's condemnation of the anti-Muslim propaganda in question?

* If Romney thinks White House officials right to distance themselves from tweets from the Cairo embassy, why does Romney also think White House officials were wrong?

- more -

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/12/13833137-the-third-time-isnt-the-charm

Those questions are related to the cover-Mitt's-ass talking points (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021328578) issued after smirkfest press conference (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021326694)

[Arugula Latte]

1. He didn't "jump the gun" -- he shot himself in the foot with the gun.

[Autumn]

4. Foot hell. I think he was channeling the guy who shot himself in the penis

from the news yesterday.

[WinkyDink]

2. Liar's premise. Nobody is saying MR "jumped the gun"; they're saying he "MADE UP the gun."

[ProSense]

3. "If Gov. Romney 'jumped the gun'..."

Premise is basically irrelevant. That's the opener to likely the worst campaign statement ever! It's worse than if he had apologized for getting the facts wrong.

[DavidL]

5. Unbelievably, there are people out there on the blogosphere agreeing with Mitt

Claiming facts not in evidence, that Obama apologized AFTER the four deaths.

There are actually lots of people that stupid out there, must be all the Fox viewers and Rushbaugh listeners.

Evidently the timeline of the last 24-48 hours has been revised "retroactively" to make it look like the President apologized after the four hero's lost their lives.

[ProSense]

6. Yes, the RW exists, and they're morons.

This incident wasn't going to change that.

[regnaD kciN]

7. Not surprising. Unfortunately...

...it plays into a right-wing meme that Obama is a Kenyan-born secret Muslim who hates America and wants to destroy it.

If you hold to that meme, or even suspect it might possibly be correct, Romney's accusation "rings true," and will therefore be accepted pre-critically. Facts that such a person may encounter later that disprove it will be ignored, because they will already have accepted the story as a part of their world-view.

As I have pointed out before, it's much like the "Al Gore claims he invented the Internet" meme. Even after it was disproved again and again, more than a decade later, it's become "conventional wisdom" which many if not most people -- not just Republican partisans -- will accept as "proven fact," even if it's just the opposite.

This is the whole rationale behind Romney/Ryan's campaign of the "Big Lie"; the right-wing media having created a caricature of Obama as the America-hating Kenyan Muslim (who also wants to screw over "ordinary" -- in other words, white -- Americans for the benefit of lazy, shiftless lower-class blacks), R&R figure all they have to do is make up "facts" out of whole-cloth that fit into that meme, and enough "low-information" voters will not only accept them because they fit that meme, but will come to regard them as establishing the meme.

Only time will tell whether there are enough such low-information voters to prove them right.

[ProSense]

10. Too late:

Mitt lost Newsmax: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021330307

Wingnut heads are exploding!

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Obama never apologized to anyone, period, before, after, during, whenever

The whole thing is a lie from start to finish.

[Winkleberry]

8. Romney's Dead Zone Moment

Hi--- rejoined member here--I've been away for a few years but I am happily back now!
Found this perfect sum-up on a local newspaper site.
http://lakeunionbeat.com/?p=1944

[uppityperson]

14. Hi, welcome back. Who were you before?

[spanone]

9. mitt is not ready for primetime. period. he has none of the qualities a President must command

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

11. I'm beyond being able to analyze or understand the Romney campaign

Maybe a mathematician studying chaos theory could explain it to me.

[ProSense]

13. And they're still digging

Romney Adviser: Obama’s Middle East Policy ‘A Disaster’
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/romney-adviser-obamas-middle-east-policy-disaster

That adviser is Dan "Idiot Neocon" Senor

Romney camp trying to walk back national security adviser Dan Senor's comment on Iran strike
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021040432