Romney: Arab Springer, Free Trader, Idiot

It's great that Romney did well in the first debate, and revealed Obama as the empty suit. But alas, now comes Romney's own stupidity.

Lawrence Auster, More on Romney's foreign policy speech

I’ve now read the key parts of Romney’s 3,400 word speech at VMI on Middle East policy. It is the pure neoconservative position: we must support Muslims’ desire for democracy, and then, once they have it, we must, unlike Obama, give the moderates enough support so that these Muslim democracies will be liberal and free, not oppressive, aggressive, and anti-American ...

... But, as I keep saying, once Muslim countries have democracy, they will democratically choose the governments that THEY want, not the governments that WE want them to choose. And since Muslim countries are populated by Muslims, the governments they choose will, inevitably, be sharia governments. Sure, every Muslim country has a moderate-Muslim or secular-liberal minority, such as the people who participated in the pro-American demonstration in Benghazi. But they are vastly outnumbered by the sharia-believing majority.

In short, Muslim liberty is a contradiction in terms. Only people who steadfastly close their eyes to the doctrinal and historical reality of Islam could believe in it, and, worse, seek to invest the energies, power, and wealth of the United States in promoting it. And the bitter fact is that the Republican nominee—our only hope of getting rid of Obamageddon Man—is such a person.

Diana West, Dear Mitt, Imagine Uncle Sam Were a Bain Client

... While there may be co-existence based on separation between the West and Islam -- your energy-independence goal is a great start -- there is no "alliance" possible between cultures so diametrically opposed at their philosophical and moral centers. The Islamic Middle East is a set of collectivist cultures rooted in Islam, where the individual, the woman, the non-Muslim are, at best, endowed with the paltriest of unequal rights by the state; nothing from their Creator. These are societies where freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech do not and cannot exist. There is no reason to hope for the common cause that underlies "alliance." Indeed, such hope is wishful thinking at best and, for a commander-in-chief, an irrational basis of policy ...

And so much for his supposed economic credentials, he's a free trade fundamentalist:

I will champion free trade and restore it as a critical element of our strategy, both in the Middle East and across the world. The President has not signed one new free-trade agreement in the past four years. I will reverse that failure. I will work with nations around the world that are committed to the principles of free enterprise, expanding existing relationships, and establishing new ones.

Romney is good on economics within the ideological confines of free trade. But until you break out of the free trade groupthink, the USA will never fix its trade imbalance, and hence never fix its unemployment.  Fixing the budget/debt, reducing the tax/regulations on business, and getting "tough" on China will only get you so far.

Romney needs to ditch free trade in favour of strategic/protectionist trade, and forget about the Islamic world - we can't democratise it.

File under: bitter facts.