On CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday morning, host Bob Schieffer spoke with guest Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee, about the situation in Ukraine and President Obama’s response to it. Romney was highly critical of Obama’s handling of Russia’s actions in particular, noting “the president’s naiveté with regards to Russia, as well as the president’s “faulty judgment about Russia’s intentions and objectives.”
Schieffer began the interview by reminding Romney of his previous comments about Russia, which came up during one of the presidential debates in 2012.
“During the campaign, and I want to start with this, you took a lot of heat for saying that Russia was our greatest geopolitical foe. In the third debate, the president came down pretty hard on you about that,” Schieffer began.
After playing a video clip of that portion of the aforementioned debate, Schieffer asked Romney his thoughts on the situation today.
“I’m sure, Governor, you’re tempted this morning to say, “I told you so.” But do you really believe that what happened in Ukraine had anything to do with what President Obama has or hasn’t done?” Schieffer asked.
Romney’s response was critical of Obama’s handling of the situation in Ukraine, and more specifically, the president’s assessment of Russia’s intentions.
“Well, there’s no question but that the president’s naiveté with regards to Russia, and his faulty judgment about Russia’s intentions and objectives, has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face,“ Romney said. “And unfortunately, not having anticipated Russia’s intentions, the president wasn’t able to shape the kinds of events that may have been able to prevent the kinds of circumstances that you’re seeing in the Ukraine, as well as the things that you’re seeing in Syria.”
“We really need to understand that Russia has very different interests than ours. This is not Fantasyland, this is reality where they are a geopolitical adversary. They’re not our enemy, but they are certainly an adversary on the world stage.”
Throughout the course of the interview, Romney emphasized that the administration could have anticipated Russia’s actions regarding Crimea and a strong message and clear threat of sanctions should have been communicated to Russia far earlier.
When Schieffer asked Romney about the current sanctions and how we could have done anything earlier, Romney elaborated.
“Well, let’s step back. I think effective leaders typically are able to see the future to a certain degree, and then try to take actions to shape it in some way,” Romney said. “And that’s of course what this president has failed to do, and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well. They thought resetting relations with Russia, handing out gifts to Russia, would somehow make Russia change its objectives. Well, that certainly wasn’t the case.”
Full transcript available at CBS News.
[Featured image: CBS News / Face the Nation video]
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hey Mittens!
maybe you should have actually tried to win the election, you stupid RINO, instead of throwing it ala McLame.
since you didn’t, now would be a good time for you to STFU and mind your own business. you had your chance and deliberately threw it away.
Wow. That shows a lot of class, not to mention a complete lack of any factual basis.
Romney lost because so many people stayed home; Obama lost votes in nearly every district, but still won.
Why do I have the feeling that “red” is one of those who stayed home, instead of trying to vote Obama out of office?
According to Limbaugh, four million Conservatives stayed home last election. You know what, I’ll be doing the same thing if we get a Chris Christie in there or if Romney runs again. I’m totally disgusted with the Establishment and the Chamber of Commerce who have announced that they do not want a “fool” running for President. Of course “fool” is another name for Conservative.
Then you will be a vote for Hillary (or whomever). Brilliant reasoning.
OFA thanks you for your support in 2012.
The Hillary for President Committee thanks you for your upcoming support in 2016.
I was a Romney supporter — Mittens had his flaws but he was a world (literally as it turns out) better than Obama.
It’s folks like you, sitting on your hands, who allow the other side their revolution.
It amazes me that people have this point of view. If you don’t vote for the (much) lesser of 2 evils, the evil one wins, and in this case, twice. What did we get? 2 new completely incompetent, unqualified Supreme Court justices (so far) who will vote for the extreme left viewpoint… FOR LIFE! Thanks so much.
What is it with centrist GOP-ers who blame the voters (!) for Romney’s and the GOP’s falure to get out enough votes to cover for the conservative voters they actively, willfully drive away?
Yeah, it was the voters’ fault. And the Edsel failed because stupid people refused to buy it.
“…the GOP’s falure to get out enough votes to cover for the conservative voters they actively, willfully drive away….”
I have never sat out an election, but unless something drastically changes between now and November, I’ll sit out this one because of the State of Illinois’ absolutely incompetent GOP. They don’t recruit candidates, they don’t support viable conservative candidates…. I’m waiting for El Bloombito to meddle again.
What on earth are you talking about?
Rauner is a complete break from the Combine that runs Illinois. He’s a complete change from Quinn. I’m quite pleased, as a life-long Republican, to be supporting Rauner in the upcoming gubernatorial race.
Because while GOP voters are allowing themselves to be driven out in a tiff, the ‘rats are driving voters in. That’s what’s up with it.
Agree. I liked him and, RINO or not, he’d have been 1000 times better than Barack Obama.
But since he didn’t have the guts to take on Obama during the campaign, I agree he needs to STFU now. Too little, too late. Not interested.
Didn’t take Obama on?
Did you perhaps miss the campaign?
The man was out there daily taking Obama on. Campaign stops, ads, press, TV, debates.
Now then: the man may have been a little too honorable (and too nice) to lay the smack on Obama that you and I would have done. That’s a different issue.
But he did something none of the rest of us did — he put himself out there as a candidate.
By ‘didn’t take Obama on’, he means ‘let Obama get away with blatant lies again and again and again’.
Obama ran the slimiest gutter campaign since Nixon, while Romney refused to hit back.
That’s an insult to Nixon. His shenanigans were bush-league by comparison to obastard’s, as they were to all ‘rat campaigns before and since then.
EVERY candidate ‘does something the rest of us don’t by putting themselves out there’. So?
The main issue was Obamacare. The GOP put up the guy whose team wrote the template with Romneycare and couldn’t attack 90% of Obamacare, coming off like a weaselly hypocrite when he tried. The GOP nominated a neutered candidate with the pleasant and peaceful personality of a Sears manikin.
The GOP, both delighted and horrified by the conservative-provided 2010 landslide, moved by 2012 to sever its own base (conservatives) by replacing them with even more ‘independents’ – their vaunted move to the middle failed in 2012 and continues to fail.
Do not blame voters specifically told to f**k off by their own party for not voting for your party.
Neither ‘major’ party is major anymore – the GOP and Dems have only thirdish pluralities, if that much.
Whoa! I’m betting Romney wins the next presidential debate hands down!
Go get ’em, Mittens! 2012 will be a landslide.
Oh, wait …
You folks calling him a RINO have no idea what the Republican Party has always been about (before the Dixiecrats tried to take over). By the way Bob Schieffer is as big a hack as Sean Hannity. America was the loser in 2012.
yeah Mr Mitt “I am undoubtedly a progressive” Romney was the best choice…he lost just as many said he would for the exact reasons they said he would.
I prostituted my vote out and voted for him but am getting sick of people blaming the conservative voters (notice I didn’t say republican there???) for not voting for a progressive.
Too bad. Those were our choices and he was BY FAR the best choice. People who didn’t vote for him because he’s not conservative are the people who gave us Obama.
Very true.
You’re homeless, barefoot and freezing. You’ve got $.01 in your pocket. Think of it as a vote, because in a moment you’re going to use that $.01 to ‘vote’. You pass by a shoe store, toes blue now, and there’s a sign saying “Sale Inside – Shoes $.01 – Today Only”. You go in because your toes are stiff with cold and you need something better than bare feet. And you have the $.01 to buy them. But there are only two pairs of shoes left on sale for $.01. You try them both, and like neither, although one is worse than the other because it’s so thin it offers no warmth. You’re about to walk out when you have an EPIPHANY! “I’m desperate for shoes, something is better than what I have, which is nothing. I would be stupid not to improve my lot in life a little bit when I have the opportunity to, which is now. I also can’t use the $.01 for anything else, anyway. I will buy the shoes that fit my needs better, even though I don’t like them.” At that point, your feet begin to warm because you have the better of the two available pairs.
See how simple that is? 🙂
America was the loser because 4M pouting conservatives stayed home. They need to learn the concept of ‘attrition’.
Most ‘pubs consider themselves too gentlemanly to street fight with the ‘rats for the toehold needed to place ever-increasingly conservative candidates in office. They don’t get it. Whoop-de-doo for the Grand Old Slow, Stupid, Jellyfish Party – and I’m speaking of the voters here – conservative voters.
Romney took some bad advice in his campaign but to claim the threw the election is outrageous. He also was not helped by the vanity campaign of Newt Gingrich and the lunatic Rick Santorum not dropping out when it was obvious they had no chance of winning. He also made a mistake in not responding to the early attacks on him by the Obama people (terrible advice by Stuart Stevens) but Romney was no McCain. Chris Christie’s embrace of Obama certainly did not help either.
Agree 100%. That darned Gingrich, arranging to have Mitt taped making the 47% remark. And Santorum – using mind control to make Romney enact Romneycare, support abortion before he opposed it, and say that we should never go back to the days of Reagan/Bush?
Diabolical.
Well, I agree with you if you’re saying everything would have been different if everything had been different.
Politics is the battle for leadership positions, so it’s about leadership, and it is the candidate’s responsibility to read the field and events as they happen in a campaign and to make the proper adjustments. Failure to lead well in the heat of a campaign battle means you lose. Romney lost. To Obama, fer crissakes. Romney is not like McCain personally or politically, but he is like McCain in that he ran a poor campaign.
Romney’s campaign had some egregious errors, to be sure, but the bottom line is do you bite off your own nose to spite your face?
There are few people more conservative than my husband and I, but we would never sit back and passively let the bad guy win just because we’re not over the moon about the better guy.
The only point proven by not voting because your guy didn’t get the nomination is that the petulance of such people is what has held the GOP back from nominating ever-increasingly conservative candidates across the board over time because we will always have a ‘rat setting the standard of comparison through the advantages of incumbency and the bully pulpit.
We will never get strong conservatives if we stay home and pout. Conservatives should be stampeding DC to drag Boehner and McConnell out of their leadership roles by what’s left of their hair. Instead, they bitch about the leadership and then stay home on election day because they’re more focused on what the GOP leadership ‘did to them’ by panning their candidate in the primaries than keeping their eyes on what the OTHER GUY has done in the past, is doing now, and plans to do if re-elected.
The point I’ll agree with is not responding to the Obama campaign’s June ad buy that really went after Mittens. The Romney campaign was husbanding its resources for the fall; they missed when the campaign really started.
Gingrich and Santorum didn’t cost Mitt the election, and I’m always a little worried about telling candidates ‘when’ they should drop out of a race. It’s their call, not mine.
I usually agree with you, but not this time. Although I agree the decision to drop out is personal, it is selfish and egotistical to drag everyone down with them by making that the breathless question on everyone’s lips every day during precious weeks of campaign season. The questions on everyone’s lips should relate to important public issues. These candidates who drag out their failing campaigns should instead lead, follow or get out of the way. Since they’re not popular enough for whatever reason to lead, then they should drop out and follow someone doing better or go home and shut the hell up, and do it fast. There are much more important matters at hand than the personal life and ego of a single politician.
Lingering for a losing battle damages the progress of our agenda. Besides that, they look petulant and foolish, which is also damaging to advancing our agenda.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/149gqohu.asp?page=1
THE KENNEDY-KHRUSHCHEV CONFERENCE FOR DUMMIES
Remedial history for Barack Obama.
…By all accounts, including Kennedy’s own, the meetings were a disaster. Khrushchev berated, belittled, and bullied Kennedy on subjects ranging from Communist ideology to the balance of power between the Soviet and Western blocs, to Laos, to “wars of national liberation,” to nuclear testing. He threw down the gauntlet on Berlin in particular, all but threatening war.
“I never met a man like this,” Kennedy subsequently commented to Time’s Hugh Sidey. “[I] talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill 70 million people in ten minutes, and he just looked at me as if to say ‘So what?'”
… two months later, the Berlin Wall went up.
… The following year brought the Cuban missile crisis, another sequel to Khrushchev’s reading of Kennedy’s weakness.
Sorry , accidental downtick. ( I never downtick ) .
This was all before my time & it is so mixed up with JFK beatification , I still don’t grasp it.
However , somewhere in that timeline the US did install serious missiles in Turkey , which at that time bordered the USSR. So a tit for tat placing of missiles seems ideologically & militarily logical. (An EU Commissar candidate is threatening that for Moldova this morning ) .
i believe the deal included the Turkey missiles being withdrawn also.
re Romney ……
In short , if he could not outwit Obama & Team , then Mitt is unlikely to have been able to. handle a far superior foe in Putin.
He has the vicious streak but I seriously doubt he would unleash anything on the world in case it put Mormommissionaries in danger . After all , he himself prioritised his mormon missionary ‘work ‘ over America’s war effort . None of his 5 sons have ever served , even in the national guard.
Even Beau Biden left his State attorney general ambitions aside to serve in a foreign theatre. As did JFK of course .
Obama bamboozled the American voters twice, but all his lies and bluster didn’t fool Putin.
Notice how he didn’t say what HE would have done as President.
Personally I dislike Obama and most of what he’s done. That said, I don’t see how or what Obama could’ve done differently that would’ve been able to thwart the Russians.
Other than weaponry or troops, there’s not much that could stop the Russians once they decided they would go in.
And although sending some weaponry might have been possible, I don’t see that doing anything other than stirring the Russians up further and troops are out of the question.
(senile old man McCain notwithstanding. Can someone please have him examined and hopefully committed? He’s obviously lost touch with reality. At least with THIS century.)
Romney refers to Obama’s history of one foreign policy screw-up after another, including clear-cut demonstrations of timidity and fecklessness, all of which combine to define the current US administration as weak and exploitable. You don’t stop the Russians once they’ve invaded, that’s far too late, you’ve already failed. You make it clear – as Reagan did – from the minute you take office that you are ready, willing, and able to stop invasions on allies’ territory. Obama made clear precisely the opposite and thereby provided one of the requisites of any Russian/Putin plan to retake all or parts of the former USSR. Yes, they do have such plans ready to go if/when the situation is ripe. All nations do this, pursuant to their individual needs and wants.
The only thing obastard hasn’t done (yet) to advance Putin’s agenda is to surrender the United States to him.
…and then there’s China.
It’s fascinating all of the people ripping into Romney. The problem is with the Republican base. There was absolutely no chance Romney would win the Republican primaries unless he swayed further to the right than he wanted to. He had to do this in order to become the Republican nominee. However, in doing so, he removed himself from the independents and on-the-fence Democrats. In the general election, he tried to move back to the middle (where most candidates win), but the Republican base didn’t like that, he already lost most of the people who would be swayed one way or the other, and every statement was blown out of proportion or labeled a “gaffe.” The media was already in the bag for Obama, and so Romney was in a lose-lose situation.
Honestly, there isn’t a good candidate the Republicans can put forward for this next election cycle. The base is too split, and no one wants to compromise anymore. The media is going to control who wins the next election. Bet on it. I saw all of the problems with Obama, it’s too bad the stubborn Republican/Tea Party base didn’t feel the need to support Romney. He would have made an incredible President, in my opinion.
Provide the evidence that the alleged failure of the stubborn Republican/Tea Party base (sic) to support Romney changed the result in enough swing states to cost him the election.
Actually, let me save you the trouble – you can’t because there isn’t any. I’ve had this “debate” numerous times on numerous blogs, and no one has ever demonstrated that a lack of conservative votes cost Romney Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia, all of which he needed to win to be elected.
BTW, Romney got more votes than McCain.
I held my nose and voted for McCain and Romney, just as many conservatives did. But we’re sick of being told to “compromise” and support Democrat Lite candidates because “This Is The Most Important Election In Recent History And Winning Is What Matters Most” by GOP Establishment types that refuse to return the favor.
We’re not walking down that one way street again.
Well, then keep marginalizing yourself. If you don’t vote, you don’t count.
He just said he voted for Romney and McCain, losers both who failed and/or refused, despite an embarrassment of opportunities in the context of the most precipitious moment in modern American history, to engage the Left, the media and the most aggressively ideological president of our time. He’s “marginalizing” himself for maintaining a set of principles and the wholly reasonable expectation that the party’s candidate not spend more energy and money trashing his base than attacking the Left? This is the sick and timorous and defeatist logic of RINOism.
“No more” is exactly right. Since the establishment GOP has demonstrated a determination to play the same deluded and losing game against the Left by nominating political pacifists more terrified of what the media thinks of them than they are concerned about America or interested in confronting the clear and present danger of Leftism, what other course is available? Third party? Something has to give. The same losing game cannot be played with the expectation of a different result. Both the process and outcome are degrading to all invloved. It is unsustainable. To pretend otherwise and promote the unsustainable as one’s duty “or else” is further degradation.
It’s a simple psychological and electoral fact that fewer conservatives than ever will turn out in 2016 if another RINO is nominated. You can rail against this reality but it won’t change it. The party is dying. It cannot exist or thrive off the failures of the democrats (Romney’s essential strategy, i.e, the lazy presumption that conservatives would be compelled to vote for him simply because Obama was just so awful). This does not inspire. RINOism will not fight the Left to win office nor, once in power, fight the Left to reverse the insidious encroachments if Progressivism. This is clear. In electing RINOs we are basically colluding in a slower suicide pact. It is simple logic and the exercise of human dignity and indignation to refuse.
^^this^^
Romney didn’t run for the presidency so much as he waited for the presidency.
We have to start somewhere. We can’t start without a toehold. We have to do this incrementally so that a more conservative agenda increasingly becomes the standard. That’s how the ‘rats did it, and look how successful they’ve been in instituting their commie agenda. Look at the judicial appointments, directorships and policy makers they’ve been able to place. Look at the power and control over you, personally, and all our institutions AND the private sector (of business) they have. Look where we are now, then think back to when socialism started here and how it has been advanced. It took decades – a methodical plodding through decades of little bits of success here and there, cobbled together and grown into a behemoth. The only way to reverse it is not unlike losing weight – a pound at a time.
There is no way that dumbed-down, lazy, taxpayer-dependent Americans with no pride are going to suddenly awaken and want a conservative country. They have to be taken there slowly with a “tough love” approach.
JRT — I think you have to do both — incremental steps but also dashes of radical acts. The radical steps throw them off balance, and present stark evidence to the LIVs that the world doesn’t collapse when a Leftist idol is shattered. For example, Scott Walker’s radical assault on the Unions. It was a shock to their system — put them on their back feet. Their response was spastic and desperate, and all the fear-mongering and hate campaigns failed. Suddenly people look around, see a prospering Wisconsin, and that the left lied. These well-timed and successful radical attacks also demoralize the Left. That’s very important.
Another example: I think if a new Republican president on his first day in January 2017 was to zero out a federal bureacracy, completely wipe it out with the stroke of a pen, this would be a great move. It would shock the establishment and would show the country that we can indeed survive a smaller government.
We don’t count now – because Establishment GOP types take us for granted, demand our support, then stab us in the back.
You either don’t get it or think things are fine that way.
I’m still waiting for evidence that a lack of conservative support cost Romney the election – you want o take a crack at it?
We will never know . I don’t doubt he would have made a good executive style President but America wanted soulfood . Now the Soultrain has runout of steam & they are pinning their hopes on Obama becoming The Mr Cool Executive .
Reharding Putin , It is 1 man against 25 Eurolackeys & Obama & going pretty well .
Absurd defeatism and capitulation to Progressive narratives. You’re thinking exactly how they want you to think.
Reagan faced much worse. He had no conservative media in his corner to speak of (there WAS no conservative media!) and was viewed by entire dominant culture as a boob and punchline. He had far less ability to reach people than a Republican does today. Yet he fearlessly, cheerfully and straightfowardly drove his own narratives with blithe disregard for the media’s paper power and influence.
The media and the Left are eminently beatable and the “split” in the republican party is insignificant by comparison to the past and reflects above all one surpassing reality — the failure in the GOP to fight back against the Left, the total frustration and craving for someone who will and the anger and fatigue over the increasing realization that NO ONE WILL.
Look at how enthusiasm and support for Romney spiked when he took on Obama in one debate. In that instant, Romney could have redefined his campaign and rallied overwhelming support from the base that would have carried him through November. What did he do instead? Backtracked and faltered, as every RINO always does when faced with media critique and the gathering fear and outrage of a cornered Left. Always retreat, never advance — the RINO motto. It’s what he did after his striking Benghazi press conference, when he had the media and Left reeling from the juxtaposition of images of leadership with Obama (Romney’s finest moment). He immediately backtracked.
It is so simple to defeat the Left it’s embarrassing. Likewise, uniting the republicans in a campaign is just as easy, and has entirely to do with confronting the Left. But RINOs don’t get it, for a number of institutional and personal reasons. The Left has gotten into their heads, and the RINOs neither recognize this nor are equipped to do anything about it.
I’m not sure just which politician in this country is a match to Putin. We need somebody in Reagan/Kissinger mode, but who would it be?
You match Putin with power, not with a politician. It is all Putin respects. The power already exists, Obama chooses to pretend it doesn’t. Any number of politicians – from both sides of the aisle – have the willingness to stand against Putin. Take your pick: Cruz, Walker, Christie, even Paul, et al.
No incoming president knows everything about nat’l domestic and foreign policy and hires a team of advisors that complements what he or she does hold expertise for. Obama has the military power on hand and the foreign policy expertise available to him, but it requires him to know and acknowledge his weakness at it. He doesn’t, can’t, actually ignores advise, and goes his own way following some uber-liberal pipe dream of what the world ‘should’ be like.
Putin hasn’t the money or the deployable ($$) military to do but so much, all of it countered by previous presidents since the wall came down. Obama screwed it up, withdrew the foreign policies that had contained Russia.
Actually, what he does as Rome burns is to play golf or shoot hoops or just takes another taxpayer-funded, multi-million dollar vacation as he laughs about it and at us.
“What? Me worry? :)”
Allen West?
3/17/14, “Report: GOP Consultant Class Continues to Get Fabulously Rich,” Breitbart, Matthew Boyle
“GOP consultant firms who made a combined $1 billion off Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 White House bid are still large and in charge of GOP politics, raking in millions more for the 2014 cycle.”
In 2012 Romney and GOP consultants had no intention of beating Obama:
12/22/12, “The story behind Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential campaign to President Obama,“ Boston Globe, Michael Kranish
“Building on its 2008 field organization, Obama’s campaign had far more people on the ground, for longer periods, and backed by better data. In Florida, for example, the Romney campaign said it had fewer than 200 staff members on the ground, a huge commitment
of its total of 500 nationwide.
But the Obama campaign had 770 staff in Florida
out of 3,000 or so nationwide….
Indeed, in swing state after swing state, the Obama field team was much bigger than the Romney troops.
Obama had 123 offices in Ohio, compared with Romney’s 40.
Obama had 59 offices in Colorado, compared with Romney’s 15,
according to statistics compiled by the Obama campaign.”…
.
================================
12/23/12, “Mitt’s Son Says He Never Wanted to be President Anyway,” Atlantic Wire, Connor Simpson
“While the rest of the piece seems to say the problems lay in the Romney campaign’s lack of technical advantage, and refusal to introduce the world to Mitt Romney, the human being, this little morsel from the Republican’s son points to a larger problem:
“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to…run,” said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. “If he could have found someone else to take his place…he would have been ecstatic to step aside.””…
========================
Against Obama in 2012 Romney refused to give any of his famous money to his campaign, even chose fundraising over campaigning in the stretch:
9/25/12, “Why doesn’t Mitt Romney contribute to his own campaign?” Reuters, Michael Waldman
“Lately, Mitt Romney has been so consumed with fundraising that his aides have had to defend his absence from the stump….
Romney, for whatever reason, has failed to use his personal wealth to pay his campaign’s bills. His refusal to self-finance is one of the mysteries of this campaign.”…
========================
The “mystery” is that Romney never wanted to run, fraudulently took money from people, is a con man, and is now into his new career as go-to political good fella of the Imperial Ruling Class to undermine conservatives and the two party system.