Ouch. The reviews of Mitt Romney's speech are terrible. But wait -- why didn't Chris Matthews get totally histrionic about it? Mitt Romney seemed sharp and quick last week. What happened? Who is this guy? Nobody seems to know. He changes every day.
Washington Post: “Much of Romney’s address focused on the complex threat posed by Iran, but he did not propose specific solutions that differ from the Obama administration’s current policy of tightening sanctions and insisting that an Iranian nuclear bomb is intolerable.”
New York Times: “Mr. Romney has yet to fill in many of the details of how he would conduct policy toward the rest of the world, or to resolve deep ideological rifts within the Republican Party and his own foreign policy team.”
New York Magazine: “Romney's speech is still light on details, and those around him wonder if he's even reading the various policy papers produced by the warring factions on his foreign policy team.”
Politico: “The former Massachusetts governor also criticized Obama for ending the war in Iraq, one of the president’s proudest accomplishments.”
AP: “The Republican has given several foreign policy speeches throughout the campaign, including one in Reno, Nev., ahead of a weeklong trip abroad in the summer. That trip was fraught, with Romney offending his British hosts by questioning their security preparations for the Olympic Games and raising hackles among Palestinians who charged him with racism after he said culture was part of the reason Israelis were more economically successful than the neighboring Palestinians.”
Washington Post: “Romney’s description of Russia as America’s ‘number one geopolitical foe’ has drawn criticism, and his overseas trip in July, intended to showcase Romney as a world leader and potential commander in chief, was widely seen as plagued by missteps.”
Los Angeles Times: “Romney faced his own political troubles after putting out a statement in the middle of the night while the attack on the U.S. consulate was still unfolding… His campaign has often struggled to explain what Romney would do differently than his Democratic rival in international hotspots such as Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iran.”
NBC’s First Read: “But according to the excerpts of the speech, almost every policy Romney will call for -- tough sanctions on Iran, withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014, a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, free trade, vigorously going after the terrorists in Libya -- has been pursued by the Obama administration.”
TIME: “Mitt Romney delivered a ‘major’ speech on foreign policy on Monday, although that designation of import comes from Romney’s own campaign, and hardly seems warranted.”
National Journal: “For the most part, however, Romney spoke of ‘reaffirming’ and ‘recommitting’ to policies that are already in place.”
Politico: “’There’s absolutely nothing in this speech. This is a repackaging of language that has been a staple of Romney’s campaign since he threw his hat in the ring,’ said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘If Romney has a foreign policy strategy, he still has not told us what it is. The governor is very fond of saying hope is not a strategy, but that cuts both ways. He didn’t answer two key questions: what he would do differently and why we should expect what he would to work.’”
Carter Eskew: “Maybe Mitt Romney's speech today at the Virginia Military Institute was a form of public debate prep for the final presidential debate on foreign policy; otherwise, I'm not sure why he gave it… It wasn't the topic of Romney's address that bothers me; it was the speech itself. The there wasn't there.”
Reuters: ANALYSIS-Romney spares details as he hits Obama on foreign policy
CBS: What does Mitt Romney believe on foreign policy?
Daily Beast: What Mitt Got Wrong in His Foreign-Policy Speech