Thursday, September 13, 2012

Sen Rob Portman (R-OH) is the worst surrogate ever

One of my senators, Rob Portman, was interviewed on CBS's morning show today, and it was a horrendous appearence.  The topic of discussion was Romney's much-maligned statement, discussed yesterday, regarding the attacks in Egypt and Libya.

To remind everyone, here's Romney's statement from Tuesday night.
"I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi.  It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."
Portman's interview was remarkable for the utter lack of knowledge of the situation he was brought on to discuss.  He states "Well, first, the statement was made the night before we knew about the deaths of those four brave Americans in Libya.  So, it was in relationship not to what happened in Libya but, of course, what happened in Egypt".

You'll note that Romney's statement clearly mentions Libya and one of the deaths.

Portman is also ignorant of the timeline, claiming that the Cairo embassy's statement, which as discussed yesterday happened several hours before either attack, came after the attack.  When pressed by the interviwer, he admitted "No, I was not aware it was issued before there were any attacks."

Well where the fuck were you all day yesterday, Senator, when the entire political universe was discussing the timeline of events?

Portman was on the program to talk about this issue, and he lacked the basic facts necessary to have anything approximating a decent discussion.  Awful.

Another post pending later on regarding the substance of Romney's position.

1 comment:

nyb said...

John Podhoretz digs into this in Commentary.

John Podhoretz digs into this in Commentary.

"It is the gospel of the foreign-policy establishment that the rages of Islamic radicals are to be understood and the views of anti-Islamic radicals are to be apologized for by people who are not responsible for them and a nation that did not disseminate them and therefore are neither responsible for nor the appropriate deliverers of an apology."


We need to get the F out of these places. America can only be an example to the world, it cannot fix it.