Mitt Romney Even Fouls Out When Pitched Softballs By Fox News

Following the Republican National Kvetch-a-Sketch, Mitt Romney announced that his first post-convention interview would be with – wait for it – Fox News. Surprised?

You might think that this press availability would be a pretty easy affair for Romney. After all, Fox is the PR division of the GOP and has been handling Romney’s promotional campaign for months. However, it didn’t take long for Romney to expose himself as nearly as incompetent an interview subject as Sarah Palin, who couldn’t name a single newspaper that she read (and considered that a “gotcha” question). Fox’s account executive …er… news anchor, Bret Baier saved a probing question for the end of his interview when he asked Romney…

“To hear several speakers in Charlotte, they were essentially saying that you don’t care about the U.S. military because you didn’t mention U.S. troops and the war in Afghanistan in your nomination acceptance speech. Do you regret opening up this line of attack, now a recurring attack, by leaving out that issue in the speech?

Notice that Baier is not asking whether Romney regrets that he failed to acknowledge and thank the American troops who are serving their country in a time of war. Baier is only asking whether Romney regrets that his omission has provided an opening for his opponents to criticize him. So it wasn’t a question about the troops at all. It was a question about the Democrats.

Nevertheless, Romney managed to utterly embarrass himself with an answer that further disregarded the troops and cast himself as even more devoid of human-like characteristics than previously thought.

“I only regret you’re repeating it day in and day out. When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important and I described in my speech, my commitment to a strong military unlike the president’s decision to cut our military. And I didn’t use the word troops, I used the word military. I think they refer to the same thing.”

So the only thing that Romney regrets is that the press has an interest in the words that he spoke in perhaps the most important speech of his life, and are seeking to understand his meaning. And if that weren’t bad enough, by his own admission Romney doesn’t think that thanking our soldiers is important, or else he would have talked about it.

Romney goes on to say that he expressed his commitment to a strong military, and that “military” and “troops” are the same thing. Actually, they’re not.

Mitt Romney and Troops

The military is a massive bureaucracy that manages various divisions of public and private enterprises engaged in defense operations and preparedness. Troops are people who train and fight and bleed and die. His context was made clear with his reference to “cut[ting] the military.” Obviously he is referring to cutting budgets, not human flesh.

This failure by Romney to draw a distinction between the two echoes his famous inarticulate insensitivity when he said that “Corporations are people, my friend.” Romney has a tendency to relate better to institutions than to mortal persons. This is further revealed in the “Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth” that is on his web site. It refers to workers as “Human Capital.” Makes your heart tingle, doesn’t it? For Romney everything is reduced to a line item on a profit and loss statement.

And this dreadfully mishandled answer was to a question from his pals at Fox News. Just wait until he has to answer questions from more neutral news organizations or those he will encounter in his debates with President Obama.

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5 thoughts on “Mitt Romney Even Fouls Out When Pitched Softballs By Fox News

  1. It doesn’t really matter what he says on fox because the only people who watch fox are foxbots, who will not understand the questions and answers, and critical reviewers, who very few foxbots will read and even fewer will be convinced by. I hope Romney does venture out of the fox cocoon to expose himself for the charlatan that he is. On the other hand, if he limits himself to fox he does himself no good because he is simply ‘preaching to the choir’. Now that they have declard war on fact-checkers as somehow something abhorrent, only as it applies to them of course, they will send their surrogates to the real news outlets and when challenged on their claims, will try to shout down their interviewers, label them ‘lame’ and move on to the next one.

  2. The Military-Industrial-Complex is People, my Friend!

    Of course, Mitt Romney “Fowled” Out. He’s a Chicken Hawk and a Vulture Capitalist.

  3. FOUR MORE *UNFORCED* errors.
    1 — NOT specifically mentioning the troops.
    2 — failing to call attention to the war.
    3 — *NOT* differentiating the difference between *TROOPS* and the military.
    4 — doubles down on his stupidity by saying that: “When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important . . . “
    How in Gods name does a candidate running for POTUS * NOT* mention the LONGEST War this country has ever been in!?

    He is due to be on Meet The Press tomorrow with David Gregory.
    I seriously doubt Gregory is going to play *NICE* with him the Faux News does.

  4. Romney is wealthy, Romney maybe a very good businessman absolutely nothing wrong with that.However Romney as a politician he is terrible. I happen to see the interview the article is referring to and I’m amazed how the interviewer practically give Romney the freaking answer. He still manage to screw it up. I’m just saying anyone with a brain can see how biased the FOX/GOP network operate .Bash Obama all day everyday. A broke clock is right at least twice a day.I have never seen or heard of Fox news ever giving Obama credit for anything even killing Bin Ladin they said well it was Bush tactic that help and he deserves half the credit ,I mean really?

  5. David Gregory doesn’t impress me. I would be pleasantly surprised if he asked anything of significance or ground breaking. He seems to be more worried about offending anyone who might or might not come on his show again. Tim Russert was a republican but a real journalist. If you decided not to come back to his show because you were exposed or offended you revealed yourself to be a charlatan. And everyone knew it.

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