Monday, October 08, 2012

Obama camp blasts Romney foreign policy speech as 'Etch a Sketch' moment

POLITICO

Team Obama blasted Mitt Romney's foreign policy speech on Monday, saying it was full of "heated rhetoric"and "chest-thumping" but few specifics.
"This is Mitt Romney's seventh attempt, by our count, to reboot his foreign policy," campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One. "When you're commander in chief, you don’t get to bring an Etch a Sketch into the Oval Office. You don’t get second chances, never mind seven chances.
"And as the American people are looking at what he had to say today, but also his record from the last few months, the areas that should be of concern are: This is somebody who leads with chest-pounding rhetoric, he's inexperienced, he’s been clumsy in his handling of foreign policy, and most of all, all of these factors lead to a risk that we're going to go back to the same policies that lead us to some of the challenges we faced in the last few years."
Psaki said Romney "doubled down" on comments he made in the infamous 47 percent fundraising video, suggesting he didn't want to end the war in Iraq and wanted to leave tens of thousands of troops there. "The president disagrees with him on that," she said. She also said Romney was completely wrong when he indicated that Obama had not signed free trade agreements.
"That is not only absurd, it’s inaccurate," Psaki said, adding that Obama renegotiated trade agreements and made them better for American workers in the auto and meat industries.
She also said it's "striking" that Romney didn't speak a lot about about China, and she said Romney needs to be more clear about what the differences are between his approach and the president's in places like Syria.
"He said that the president and his team are not doing enough when it comes to Syria, when it comes to Libya and several events in the Middle East," she said. "What exactly are they suggesting we do? What exactly is their plan and their proposal? So if they're going further, they should say that."
White House press secretary Jay Carney also questioned Romney's stances, asserting for example that his saying he would put conditions on Egypt aid don't add up.
"On the one hand, he suggests the president hasn't been supportive enough of the Democratic aspirations of people in the region, and on the other hand, he says that we should withdraw our conditioned support," Carney said.

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