Romney Speech Raised Red Flags for Military School, Documents Show
When Mitt Romney addressed a crowd of cadets at Virginia Military Institute on Oct. 8, he was supposed to give a major foreign policy speech that steered clear of partisan politics. That's because VMI personnel observe the US military's tradition of political neutrality when in uniform. But internal emails obtained by Mother Jones show that Romney's campaign pushed to burnish his commander-in-chief credentials by maximizing military optics around the event. Members of Romney's staff sought to use the VMI logo in their campaign materials, requested that uniformed cadets be let out of class early to attend Romney's speech, and asked VMI "to select a few cadet veterans and give them a place of honor" standing behind Romney during his address.
As the campaign pushed for these requests, VMI officials pushed back, concerned that they were for partisan purposes. Each request was denied by the state-run institution, whose students serve in the US military's Reserve Officers Training Corps, so that VMI would not be seen as endorsing Romney's candidacy. The Romney campaign also pressured VMI to play host to "15 to 20" retired admirals and generals at the school who traveled there to endorse Romney; VMI eventually relented to that request.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/romney-speech-vmi-emails
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