Even though some of the Olympic competitions have already started, the opening ceremony is scheduled for 6pm local time tomorrow. Mitt Romney’s itinerary says he’ll be there, but he’d probably like to be anywhere else. All anyone in the U.K. is talking about is how stupid and obnoxious Mitt Romney has been since his arrival in their country. By insulting their preparations for the games, Romney received direct and harsh rebukes from both the Prime Minister and the mayor of London. He also violated Britain’s security protocols by revealing the whereabouts of the head of MI6, their equivalent of the CIA. He forgot the name of the Labor Party’s leader. He questioned whether the country could unite to celebrate the Olympics. And this all came after his adviser said (essentially) that Romney was a better ally of the U.K. than the current occupant of the White House because he isn’t a negro.
Romney will be jeered anywhere he goes in London. This is particularly true because it’s now being reported in Britain that Romney wrote the following in his idiotic 2010 book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness:
England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn’t make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn’t been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler’s ambitions. Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth’s land and a quarter of the earth’s population.
The British media are also reporting that Romney has insulted their health care system and has repeatedly denigrated Europe throughout the primaries and campaign. If all these things were not bad enough, 10 Downing Street has let it be known that they found Romney to be ‘apparently devoid of charm, warmth, humour or sincerity,’ and ‘worse than Sarah Palin.’
And all this criticism is coming from members of the Conservative Party and their preferred newspaper outlets like the U.K. Telegraph and The Daily Mail.
If Romney wanted to make the case that he’d get along with the U.K. better than Obama, he’s failed spectacularly. Tomorrow, he will be the least welcome person at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. And the Olympics were supposed to be Romney’s only remaining strength, since his record as governor is indefensible and his record at Bain Capital is appalling.
Wow, they actually agree with John McCain on something.
This is all simply delicious. I love the Olympics, and I didn’t think anything could possibly make them better. Boy, was I wrong!
Just looking at clips from his trip, he appears just as uncomfortable with foreign leaders as he so obviously is with the common folk – you know, “the help” – in this country. He couldn’t even do the matching-armchair photo op with David Cameron convincingly. What should have been a real honor for any wannabe world leader just appeared to be something that is beneath him.
I can’t help but wonder if he even likes other people at all.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer anglo-saxon.
He prefers to mix it up with his own kind which may or may not earthling homo sapiens.
Yes. Good lord, that meet-and-greet with Cameron was painful to watch.
He did his conversion work in France right? He should have gone there. Heh.
Can’t imagine that he was a success in gaining converts. Meanwhile back home, his daddy was succeeding in converting Ann.
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Britain for dummys
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Now, all all yawl ready to talk about a brokered convention? Talk about Ron Paul? ‘Cuz R-money isn’t gonna’ make it.
Sometimes being Cassandra just makes y’ smile.
I wish that were true because it would show the wheels had entirely come off the GOP machine. But sadly Mittens will take the nomination and will score a lot of votes. Who knows how the England gaffs will play at home. There are a lot of uninformed people and Karl Rove is raising a lot of money.
no. that’s still a crazy scenario. They’re stuck with Willard. LOL.
What was it Grandma used to say about counting chickens?
no, really. they are stuck with Willard.
Ain’t gonna be Ron Paul, even if he DOES arrive in his huffing, puffing, whimsical steam-powered vehicle.
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Your Grandma gave you good advice, “Cassandra.”
For those need Romney-free laughs: check out Matt Taibbi’s latest critique of aFriedman Op-Ed. He’s right, poor Tom is getting more incoherent with age.
Romney’s London performance reminds me of Palin’s interview with Bob Schieffer. It’s the tipping point.
Even though the right wing guys are saying, “who cares?”, the pattern is expanding. And even if they argue that no one will remember this in October, by October a solid frame will be in place; individual specifics won’t matter. The pattern will, and it will doom Romney. The guy is toxic at home and abroad. And today was in London, of all places, where it should have been easy to be cordial. Then we have “Nut n Honey” saying, that no, they’re not old friends. What next?
This is a goodwill tour??
It’s fascinating to watch a political narrative being constructed organically and not within the bowels of some rightwing think tank or Rove’s mind. It’s what Lakoff keeps trying to explain to Democrats — only Democrats need to appeal to fiction. It took the Brits but a few hours to point out that the GOP potentate wannabe is naked.
Has he gone to Poland yet? So many opportunities for insensitivity and historical blindness there. The mind boggles.
I know, that’s the one I’m waiting for.
Israel has a lot of potential, too. I’m especially looking forward to his calling the government of Egypt terrorists.
Beyond his inevitable failure to grasp any subtleties of Middle East politics, is it possible to be so bellicose that Netanyahu squirms?
I’d call all this a glitch in his software, but it increasingly appears to be a basic feature.
“I understand your country has overcome great difficulties of intellect, which made even simple tasks like replacing lightbulbs a very difficult endeavor indeed.”
love it!!!! can’t wait for the actual teevee clip
Other than calling England the island, instead of Britain, what exactly is wrong about that? Impolitic, definitely, but heck, the UK is a decrepit former empire. It’s even worse now that it’s double dipping into recession.
Fucking politics, I love it, man. All this trouble because he said Londoners aren’t enthused about an Olympics they admitted they don’t care about. And then it all blew up from there. Fucked over for finally telling the truth about something. So good.
C’mon. He’s writing a book about how great America is and how we should never apologize for anything, and he attacks England for having small houses?
Why is he even bashing England in the first place if he is so proud to be an Anglo-Saxon?
He didn’t tell the truth. He just wrote a shitty book.
Because the context for that quote is probably that America will fall like the British empire if we let the godless Democrats and socialists get their way. Now, that may not be yours or my interpretation of events, but there’s no denying that Britain’s not much to look at compared to what it once was.
But it’s not really about the book. So I’m not sure why you’d hit me on that when I said that it was telling the truth about the Olympics to Brian Williams that got the Brits all up in a nationalistic bother? If not for Mitt, those phony Brits would still be bitching about traffic lanes.
you should at least read more of the book than the two sentences Booman quotes before you defend it. hint: he does with GB and free trade in the book what he does with Obama’s record in his campaign vids.
Because if you’re aware of how the British are, you’d know that they’re some of the biggest whiners on Earth; that is, until Romney, a fucking American, joins in. Then they get pissed off.
Yeah, right. Britain was saved by Hitler’s inability to cross a channel about one-tenth the width of the Mediterranean Sea that the German Army crossed so easily. But I digress.
For the sake of argument, I’ll concede your point that Romney’s take was 100% accurate. Even if you’re right, it doesn’t matter. Diplomacy is, in large part, about knowing what not to say.
Romney wrote his book in 2010 for the same reason every prospective presidential candidate does, to build early momentum for his campaign. Moreover, he had already run once, and was considered at the time the presumptive frontrunner for 2012.
How does a man write something like that after he’s already spent three years trying to make the case that he’s the best man for a job in which every single word he writes or utters would be parsed within inches of its life? Yet wars have been started over insults milder than Romney’s passage on England. Doesn’t matter if it’s true. You don’t say it.
Romney could have made a comparison with England’s loss of world preeminence, and why he thinks its policies led to that decline, without that shit about small roads and houses and being Hitler’s bitch.
He included those gratuitous insults to underscore his contempt for a country that is one of the strongest and most important allies of the United States, and a country that – unlike, say, Israel or Saudi Arabia – few people really hate. He did so in the context of trying to make the case that among other things, he’s the best possible person to lead U.S. foreign policy. There’s no excuse for that. None. And you haven’t offered one.
Don’t have to, chief. When exactly did I start working for the Romney campaign?
Y’all have a real fixation on that stupid book that nobody on earth ever read before, too. Politics makes ordinary people’s brains do funny things.
It’s one thing to enjoy watching Romney fuck up and get turned into a pinata, it’s another to take England’s side in all this.
They’re a pathetic nation with a double-dip recession and massive criminality extending into the furthest reaches of its government, media, and financial institutions, and an Olympic games that cost a bazillion dollars that nobody except the Chinese are ever particularly psyched about hosting anymore. So yeah, they’re beating up the robot man.
Romney and the UK are both equally terrible and they deserve each other.
but then again, mitt does rhyme well.
Boo, what do you think will happen re: Mitt as goposaur candidate?
The whole situation with the goposaurs reminds me of the advice one always gives a battered wife – remove yourself from the situation. Mitt’s visit to GB is like an outside intervention. I especially like that the brits are mentioning the gop clown show primary.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."But he’ll bring back the Churchill bust.
Several ‘New Liberals’ such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill replaced the earlier ideology apparent in figures such as William Ewart Gladstone (see Gladstonian Liberalism) who felt that people should be more trusting of their fate to market forces and the “invisible hand” of capitalism. Germany and the United States were overtaking Britain as economic powers – the success of social legislation in Bismarck’s Germany made leading Liberals in the UK such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill want to put forward similar legislation. Per wiki
Yet Mitt polls higher than the Prez on “the economy”. … sigh!
Is it possible that Romney is trolling the Brits like he trolled the NAACP? I half expect him to tell the base some baloney like “I’m willing to talk straight to our allies.”
It jes’ grew like Topsy.
Now it’s an article.
Romney IS the Fix
Read it.
It’s funny.
In a ghastly sort of way.
Later…
AG
the entire England trip has been hilarious to watch
So while Ann and Mitt are droning on on Today Show about how they just love “Downtown Abbey” (way to pander huh), to quote Montel Jordan: This Is How We Do It
“Michelle Obama on Olympics: British “know what they’re doing””
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57481220/michelle-obama-on-olympics-british-know-what-theyre-
doing/
Yeah. And he still might win.
And imagine if Mitt had arrived in Israel and made comments about their ‘disturbing’ security failings or unveiled a meeting with Israel’s Masad? That would be worth the popcorn!
Mossad
And today Der Spiegel weighs in (English language edition):
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/mitt-romney-stumbles-during-campaign-trip-to-london-a-8467
22.html
No doubt the Germans are mightily grateful that His Mittness will not be gracing them with a visit.