Romney hits Huck on foreign affairs
Posted: Saturday, December 15, 2007 2:19 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Erin McPike
HUMBOLDT, IA -- One day after Romney said he wouldn’t contrast himself with Huckabee on foreign policy experience despite stressing that it’s fair for him to point out differences between the two men, the former Massachusetts governor lit into his Arkansan colleague for a forthcoming article he penned for Foreign Affairs.
Romney took issue with Huckabee’s claim that “The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive both at home and abroad.”
He said that when he read that, he “had to look again,” because he thought, “Did this come from Barack Obama? Or from Hillary Clinton? Did it come from John Edwards. No. It was one of our own. It was Gov. Huckabee.”
He went on: “I simply can’t believe that. I can’t believe he’d say that. I’m afraid he’s running from the wrong party.”
Later with reporters, Romney went further into his criticism. “The suggestion that foreign affairs is like children on a playground -- that’s not exactly the allegory I would draw upon. It’s a far more serious and monumental effort than kids at school.” He also leveled the following slam: “I was disappointed in the quality of the thinking and the quality of the recommendations there.”
The Associated Press reported that Huckabee said recently, “I may not be the expert as some people on foreign policy, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”
Asked about his typical references to some of the United States’ top allies such as Britain and France as second-tier nations, and whether that may also be counterproductive in diplomatic relations, Romney said, “No. There’s one superpower. I think they all agree. There’s one superpower on the planet. That’s us right now, and then there are nations which are one tier below that. And I’ve always said as well that they’re great nations, but they’re not superpowers that they once were.” He went on to point out that “The French call us a hyper power, so they recognize there’s a difference in our military and economic capacities.” He added, “In my view it’s important for us to remain as the world’s economic and military leader.”
Romney was also taken to task to on the Iraq war and his view of the mistakes that were made versus what went right. He said that he spoke on the issue at the beginning of the year in Israel about what he would do differently. But he also turned attention to Iran by pointing out that he put together an article in Foreign Affairs -- “gosh, it must have been six months ago” –- in which he laid out “a seven-step plan” to get Iran to abandon its nuclear ambition. He acknowledged that the management, organization, preparation and planning were sub-par heading into the Iraq war.
Immediately after Romney spoke with reporters, spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom further discussed the article and -- asked the implications of the timing of it -- he replied: “I think if you do a little research, you’ll find that Gov. Huckabee gave a very similar speech to this article this past summer. There was criticism of his views at that time on the blogosphere, but then it disappeared pretty quickly, because you know at that point, Huckabee was pretty low in the polls. But now with this Foreign Affairs article coming out, there’s going to be a lot more attention paid to what he says.”
