Mitt Romney

Obama’s top ten foreign policy and national security failures

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From the Mitt Romney Press, The Foreign Policy & National Security Failures Of President Obama.  Let’s start with number eight:

Failure #8: Emboldening The Castros, Chávez & Their Cohorts In Latin America

President Obama has diminished respect for the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. He has put strain on relationships with friendly nations while appeasing or downplaying the threat from those leaders who oppose our interests.

  • Delay In Approving Trade Agreements. President Obama waited three years before submitting to Congress trade agreements with our partners Colombia and Panama—agreements signed by the previous administration—for fear of angering the union bosses to whom he owes political loyalty. President Obama has not sought to reach any new trade agreements in the region, despite there being strong trading potential and natural connections between Latin America and the Latino business community in the United States.
  • Appeasement Of The Castro Regime.While he dragged his feet on trade agreements with our friends, President Obama moved quickly to relax travel and remittance restrictions on Cuba mere months into his term while demanding nothing in return that would offer the Cuban people their long-denied freedom. The Cuban regime responded that same year by jailing American citizen and USAID contractor Alan Gross, who remains imprisoned to this day. The Castros continue to oppress their own people and imprison pro-democracy dissidents.
  • Failing To Recognize The Threat Posed By Hugo Chávez.President Obama stated, “But overall my sense is that what Mr. Chávez has done over the last several years has not had a serious national security impact on us.” This statement underplayed the strategic threat posed by Chávez and goes a long way in explaining the President’s failure to stand resolutely for democracy and economic opportunity in Latin America. Chávez is leading a virulently anti-American “Bolivarian” movement across Latin America that seeks to undermine institutions of democratic governance. The Bolivarian movement threatens U.S. allies such as Colombia, has interfered with regional cooperation on key issues such as illicit drugs and counterterrorism, has provided safe haven for drug traffickers, has encouraged regional terrorist organizations, and has invited Iran and foreign terrorist organizations like Hezbollah into the region.

The list, click here to read the details.

Failure #1: No Results In Slowing Or Stopping Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Failure #2: Endangering Our Mission In Afghanistan And Weakening Our Relationship With Pakistan

Failure #3: “Unconscionable” Leaks Of Classified Counterterror Information From The White House That Have Been “Devastating”

Failure #4: “Devastating” Defense Cuts That Will Cede Our Status As A “Global Power”

Failure #5: A Damaged Relationship With Israel And A Moribund Peace Process

Failure #6: No Coherent Policy To Stem The Humanitarian And Strategic Disaster In Syria

Failure #7: A “Reset” With Russia That Has Compromised U.S. Interests & Values

Failure #8: Emboldening The Castros, Chávez & Their Cohorts In Latin America

Failure #9: Getting Beaten Badly By Competitors On Trade

Failure #10: Putting Our Interests At Risk By Mismanaging The Transition In Iraq

And yes, Mitt Romney has a plan, with details.  Read that here.

Required reading for the final exam on November 6

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liberal_brain1

Final exam will be worth 100% of your grade.  True/False format.  Exam required for graduation.  Location: your local polling place.

Liberalism, as we know it

By George F. Will, Published: August 31

With Americans, on average, worth less and earning less than when he was inaugurated, Barack Obama is requesting a second term by promising, or perhaps threatening, that prosperity is just around the corner if he can practice four more years of trickle-down government.

This is dubious policy, scattering borrowed money in the hope that this will fill consumers and investors with confidence. But recently Obama revealed remarkable ambitions for it when speaking in Pueblo, Colo., a pleasant place Democratic presidents should avoid.

After delivering in Pueblo what would be his last extended speech, Woodrow Wilson suffered a collapse that prefaced his disabling stroke. And in Pueblo this summer, Obama announced what should be a disqualifying aspiration.

After a delusional proclamation — General Motors “has come roaring back” — Obama said: “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.” We have been warned.

Obama’s supposed rescue of “the auto industry” — note the definite article, “the” — is a pedal on the political organ he pumps energetically in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere. Concerning which:

He intervened to succor one of two of the U.S. auto industries. One, located in the South and elsewhere, does not have a long history of subservience to the United Auto Workers and for that reason has not needed Obama’s ministrations. He showered public money on two of three parts of the mostly Northern auto industry, the one long entangled with the UAW. He socialized the losses of GM and Chrysler. Ford was not a mendicant because it was not mismanaged.

Today, “I am GM, hear me roar” is again losing market share, and its stock, of which taxpayers own 26 percent, was trading Thursday morning at $21, below the $33 price our investor in chief paid for it and below the $53 price it would have to reach to enable taxpayers to recover the entire $49.5 billion bailout. Roaring GM’s growth is in China.

But let’s not call that outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, lest we aggravate liberalism’s current bewilderment, which is revealed in two words it dare not speak, and in a four-word phrase it will not stop speaking. The two words are both verbal flinches. One is “liberal,” the other “spend.” The phrase is “as we know it.”

Jettisoning the label “liberal” was an act not just of self-preservation, considering the damage liberals had done to the word, but also of semantic candor: The noble liberal tradition was about liberty — from oppressive kings, established churches and aristocracies. For progressives, as liberals now call themselves, liberty has value, when it has value, only instrumentally — only to the extent that it serves progress, as they restlessly redefine this over time.

Continue reading here.