Hypocrites: GOP Criticizers of Obama's Lack of Foreign Policy Experience Are Praising Romney's Lack of Experience in Foreign Affairs
The same Republicans who criticized President Obama for lacking foreign policy experience in 2008 are now stepping in to defend the dismal international relations record of Romney-Ryan ticket.
Former House Speaker New Gingrich (R) and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) on Sunday argued that Romney and Ryan are actually better equipped to lead on international relations than Obama and Biden:
GINGRICH: I think it’s an advantage that they’re not part of the current mess….Mitt Romney has the same amount of foreign policy experience as Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet empire decisively in 8 years. I would rather have Romney and Ryan rethinking everything than have the current team continue.
PAWLENTY: Romney and Ryan have a terrific national security policy team around them…Governor Romney spent his entire career in global business arrangements, transactions and traveling and understanding different countries, cultures and geography.
But both Gingrich and Pawlenty were happy, in 2008, to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows at do the opposite — attack Obama and Biden for not having the foreign policy chops they deemed necessary.
In the fall of 2008, Gingrich asked Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, “Who do you trust more to deal with the dangerous world … somebody who has read about it and sort of vaguely thought about it but hasn’t really collided head-on with it?”
Pawlenty echoed a similar line. “He basically graduated from law school, went on to be a community organizer and a law professor; went to the U.S. Senate and began running for president essentially the day he arrived,” he said of Obama on Meet The Press in 2008, “So what is it in his background, Tom, that would give him that same type of requisite wisdom and judgment and insight on national security matters or foreign affairs matters or anything else?”
