Romney’s Foreign Policy: About Face or Two-Faced?

by alexoscarew | November 3, 2012 at 08:30 am

102 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

During the last few weeks of this presidential campaign, I have become terribly confused listening to Mitt Romney address America’s foreign policy challenges.

I have followed Romney’s every word for almost two years now, and I simply don’t recognize the guy who spoke at Virginia Military Institute on October 8th or the one who showed up to debate President Obama last week.

Since the beginning of this long campaign, Romney has given ten foreign policy addresses. At every turn he has positioned himself as a severe critic of the Administration, condemning the president for “diminishing American leadership” and “betraying the trust that allies place in the United States.” Taking his cue from his bevy of neo-conservative advisers, Romney has appeared to embrace their tenets and even conflated their projection of American exceptionalism with elements of his own Mormon creed. His message has been that “America must lead through strength” and use its “great power to shape history.”