TOONS: Willard's Trip Abroad

I love it!

... if he's elected as president.

and as acridly funny (and truthful) as ever.

They do great stuff too.

As in 2008, Obama's going to have to win by 15% (again) to "win" by 2% (again).

Romney tour '12 - gaffepalooza

Aug 2, 2012
by Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON — How is Mitt Romney’s summer vacation going? Fine, except for frequent pauses to remove foot from mouth.

He began his “Look At Me, I’m a Statesman” overseas tour by offending the people of the United Kingdom. To put it mildly, Romney is no genius at reading the mood of an audience. But even he realized things were not going well when he saw tabloid headlines such as “Mitt the Twit” and “Nowhere Man.”

Romney’s offense — he said there were “disconcerting” signs that London might not be ready to host the Olympics — was silly but not inconsequential. It actually revealed quite a lot about how the candidate sees himself and his place in the world.

What Romney knows about running the Olympics is exceeded only by what Romney thinks he knows about running the Olympics. As Prime Minister David Cameron obliquely noted, staging the games in London isn’t the same as staging them in Salt Lake City. British organizers are working amid the bustle of one of the great cities of the world, Cameron said, not out in “the middle of nowhere.”

Read more: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120802/OPINION04/308020011/Eugene-Robinson-Romney-tour-12-gaffepalooza?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CHome%7Cs

ROGER SIMON
7/31/12

Maybe Mitt Romney should have just stayed in London and watched the dancing horses.

Or just stayed home. Even though his recent trip to England was largely a public relations disaster, he made a more serious mistake in his next stop, Israel, and got a major rebuff in his last stop, Poland.

Romney’s trip abroad in the waning months of this presidential campaign had three goals: establish his credibility on foreign policy while in England, woo the Jewish vote while in Israel and entice Catholic voters while in Poland.

In retrospect, he should have spent the time in Ohio, Virginia and Florida, all of which I think he needs to win in order to beat President Barack Obama.

In England, Romney didn’t show any particular foreign policy expertise. He did manage to insult his British hosts by criticizing the London Olympics, but that won’t lose him any votes in the United States.

And his campaign did get in one dog whistle, which was so obvious it was more like a dog baying at the moon: A Romney adviser told a British newspaper that Obama was incapable of fully appreciating the “Anglo-Saxon heritage” between the U.S. and Britain. “We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” one said.

Translation: A black guy just isn’t a member of our club and never will be.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/79169.html

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