Weak Responses to Romney's Foreign Policy Address

The weakest response to Mitt Romney's foreign policy address, which he delivered earlier today at the Virginia Military Institute, comes from Virginia-based trade publication Politico.

In a piece titled, "Experts pan Romney foreign policy speech," writer Josh Gerstein notes, "Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech Monday was filled with tough talk and slams of President Barack Obama’s leadership — but little of the clarity Romney has vowed to bring to the Oval Office."

Analysts reviewing what the Republican nominee said in what his campaign billed as a major foreign policy address weren’t impressed. The speech, they say, was much like Romney’s previous swings at laying out a foreign policy: couched in broad ideology and big ambitions and lacking the specifics for how he’d bring any of them about.

The "analysts" turn out to be an Obama campaign surrogate (like Madeleine Albright) and two liberal foreign policy establishment types (such as, James Lindsay). 

In other words, the headline should've read, "Liberals pan Romney foreign policy speech," and not included the ambiguous word "experts" in place of the word "liberals." But who would've clicked on a boring story like that? Too predictable, uninteresting.

Put another way, the only way these "experts" commenting on the speech might have been newsworthy is if they spoke out in praise of Romney, not against him.

Nor surprisingly, within 13 minutes of being published, the Obama campaign was pushing the Politico story to reporters, via an email by spokesman Ben LaBolt.

Coming in a close second is CNN. The Ted Turner-owned cable channel writes:

Just hours after Mitt Romney delivered what was billed as a major foreign policy address by his campaign, what caught our eye today was not what we saw, but what we didn’t in terms of reaction from conservative thought leaders.

As of late this afternoon, Red State, The Weekly Standard and National Review did not have a fresh take on Romney’s speech from the Virginia Military Institute where he accused President Obama of leading “from behind” in terms of the Middle East. The speech was an effort by the Romney campaign to call into question Obama’s record on foreign policy at a time when polls shows that voters have confidence in the president on this subject.

This line of critique is without substance -- and wrong. Consider this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. And of course there's this.

So maybe it's true CNN "didn't" see "reaction from conservative thought leaders," but it's hard to blame conservatives for CNN not reading their work.