I smell John Bolton

I smell John Bolton

by digby

To those still wondering if Romney might be a kinder, gentler foreign policy president, think again:

Yesterday we noted that Mitt Romney, down in the polls after the convention, was throwing the kitchen sink at President Obama. Little did we know the kitchen sink would include — on the anniversary of 9/11 — one of the most over-the-top and (it turns out) incorrect attacks of the general-election campaign . Last night after 10:00 pm ET, Romney released a statement on the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya. After saying he was “outraged” by these attacks and the death of an American consulate worker, Romney said, “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.”

Yet after learning every piece of new information about those attacks, the Romney statement looks worse and worse — and simply off-key. First, Romney was referring to a statement that the U.S. embassy in Egypt issued condemning the “efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” But that embassy statement, which the White House has distanced itself from, was in reference to an anti-Islam movie and anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones, and it came out BEFORE the embassy attacks began. Then this morning, we learned that the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and others died in one of the attacks.

He doubled down this morning, anyway:

This is vintage Bolton. He’s a psychopath. And he’s advising Romney. On the other hand, I’m sure there are other psychopaths advising him too, so who knows?

Update: From twitter, I gather that the wingnuts are thrilled. This could be the one thing that gets the base excited about Mitt. Nothing they love more than dangerous, bellicose foreign policy rhetoric.