Mitt Romney Doesn't Care About Muslim People

David Weigel | May 4, 2007

Everybody agrees that Mitt Romney's polished, Auton-esque debate performance lifted his profile a little, but Matthew Yglesias caught him lumping the Muslim Brotherhood in with "the worldwide jihadist effort."

To put it bluntly, the trouble here is that the Muslim Brotherhood just isn't a violent terrorist organization, and certainly doesn't commit acts of violence against the United States. It's an extremely traditionalist multinational civil society organization. It's true that a lot of violent types used to be in the Brotherhood and now they're in terrorist groups, but used to be is the key phrase here, they left the Brotherhood because the Brotherhood wouldn't sign on for their agenda. In one clause, Romney's just gone and broadened the war to include a huge new category of people who have no intention of waging war against the United States or even against Israel.

Note that even without the Muslim Brotherhood bit, this is a terrible idea. If you liked Iraq, you're going to love trying to root Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon and Hamas out of the West Bank.

I still don't think Chuck Hagel would get any traction in a presidential bid. There's only a sliver of a GOP anti-war vote and he'd be splitting it with Ron Paul. But one thing he could do, that Paul chooses not to, is pick up comments like Romney's and hurl them back in the candidate's face, live, while the cameras are rolling. The GOP field is talking like the last seven years of war and horrible blunders didn't happen - the closest they come is McCain bitterly talking about the botched Iraq occupation. No one's challenging the candidates' hawkish talk about Islam and Iran, much less fact-checking it on the spot. The result of all this could be a GOP ticket that knows even less about foreign policy than Bush and Cheney.

Comments

|5.4.07 @ 1:14PM|#

Is this the Chuck Hagel Senator-from-Nebraska we're talking about here, or some sort of West Wing fantasy you've constructed? It's kind of hard to picture the former being capable of something like that.

|5.4.07 @ 1:16PM|#

Take it from a Masschusetts Voter (he was our governor) - Romney is an empty suit

|5.4.07 @ 1:25PM|#

I practically forced my wife to watch the debate last night. She is far too intelligent to care about politics.

Afterwards, she said of Romney, "I'd vote for him."

It's a done deal. Last night we saw the first step in the making of the forty-third President of the United States of America, President Willard Romney.

(that empty suit sure draped well off of his shoulders)

|5.4.07 @ 1:28PM|#

They are trying to appeal to the crazy Jesus Christers--how fucking hard is that to understand? Islam = evil, period. It is especially important for the Mormon infomercial guy to stress this, since his Christer credentials don't really cut it with Baptists, Pentecostals and the like, and given that his emphasis on these points directly contradicts his entire previous political career.

|5.4.07 @ 1:30PM|#

Cab,

Over at NRO, K-Lo can't turn up her vibrator high enough when Romney is in view, so maybe that is a factor. Seems crazy to us, I know, but chicks....

Althouse|5.4.07 @ 1:39PM|#

When I realized that Mitt Romney Doesn't Care About Muslim People . . . is when I started to cry.

Seitz|5.4.07 @ 1:43PM|#

But one thing he could do, that Paul chooses not to, is pick up comments like Romney's and hurl them back in the candidate's face, live, while the cameras are rolling.

I'm with Henry. Doing this during primary season is a death sentence for a Republican candidate. If it's Brown, and it kneels down to pray a few times every day in the same direction, it must be destroyed. That's what the base wants to hear. There is no difference between bad Muslims and good Muslims because they're all BAD MUSLIMS.

Grand Chalupa|5.4.07 @ 1:51PM|#

The Muslim Brotherhood has the same goals as Al-Qaida, they just have different methods.

The fact that liberals find nothing wrong with an orginization that wants the world under Sharia law as long as they don't commit terrorist acts shows what pussies they are and why they shouldn't be taken seriously.

|5.4.07 @ 1:51PM|#

...the last seven years of war...

Huh? Did you fail arithmetic? It's been about 5.5 years.

|5.4.07 @ 1:54PM|#

The result of all this could be a GOP ticket that knows even less about foreign policy than Bush and Cheney.

All aboard!

|5.4.07 @ 1:56PM|#

GC--

Do you always dance with straw men, or is this just a special occasion?

|5.4.07 @ 1:57PM|#

The Muslim Brotherhood IS part of the worldwide jihadist effort, it has the same goals and different methodology. Does this mean we need to kill as many of its members as possible as we do with Al Queida? No. Does it mean we shouldn't recognize they are on the same team as Al Queda? No.

I'd be VERY interested to see any statement my the MB so much as condemning and one of the innumerable acts of violence AQ has committed.

|5.4.07 @ 1:58PM|#

New Zealand here I come!

I'm thinking of moving to NZ, as well. Thanks to my EU citizen wife, we could go there, but I'm pessimistic about the future of both the US and EU for a variety of reasons. NZ is far away from both places.

Lupito41|5.4.07 @ 2:10PM|#

"Last night we saw the first step in the making of the forty-third President of the United States of America..."

Forty-fourth. The forty-third was concocted in 1946 in New Haven and can't run again.

stephen the goldberger|5.4.07 @ 2:11PM|#

why are we paying attention to the republican debates anyways? Whoever wins has no chance in hell of winning the General Election. With a pointless speculative article on a potential McCain presidency, and this much coverage of these debates Reason is ignoring the reality of the situation, which is the DEMS are going to win, and they should be devoting their time to scrutinizing them.

|5.4.07 @ 2:20PM|#

Why we should ever take anything Yglesias writes seriously is a mystery to me. This pompus hero of the middle-brow journalist gets everything wrong from politics to music to basketball.

The Muslim Brotherhood no longer engage in out and out terrorism like some other groups, though they have the same stated ends as many of these other groups and they often provide funding and safe haven. In some sense they are like Sinn Fein to the IRA (not exactly, but similar). In the 60s and 70s in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood was more violent than it is now.

This is the idiotic "gotcha" stuff that Matt constatnly pulls--it shouldn't be interesting to anyone but his synchophants, which I assume are nerdy 15 year old manhattanites who attend the "cool, progressive" private schools in New York.

|5.4.07 @ 2:21PM|#

Lupito - you're right...my bad

Steve to the G - I wouldn't be so sure about that. I don't think H. Clinton can win the general election.

|5.4.07 @ 2:22PM|#

Um, this is the same Muslim Brotherhood that carried out multiple deadly terrorist attacks across Syria and took over the city of Hama, prompting Assad to bomb it, and them, to smithereens, right?

Is Yglesias doing a bit of whitewashing here?

|5.4.07 @ 2:32PM|#

Um, this is the same Muslim Brotherhood that carried out multiple deadly terrorist attacks across Syria and took over the city of Hama, prompting Assad to bomb it, and them, to smithereens, right?

So, now, Assad is an ally in the war on terror?

|5.4.07 @ 2:50PM|#

Romney is right on this point, and Yglesias is wrong.

Not that I'd vote for either of them.

|5.4.07 @ 3:19PM|#

So, now, Assad is an ally in the war on terror?

No. And if he were, how exactly would that make Yglesias right?

Cesar|5.4.07 @ 4:07PM|#

GC-

Would you then support Syria which ruthlessly massacred the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s?

|5.4.07 @ 4:09PM|#

stephen the goldberger

Don't get cocky kid.

|5.4.07 @ 5:39PM|#

Would you then support Syria which ruthlessly massacred the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s?

I would've supported that specific action, it doesn't mean I would support Syria for life.

Some civillians got caught up in the killing too, but you know, its a tough world.

|5.4.07 @ 6:42PM|#

I see nothing wrong with ruthlessly massacring violent control freaks of any stripe.

Matthew|5.4.07 @ 9:00PM|#

Man, is this an ignorant post. The Muslim Brotherhood in its current incarnation is clearly an incipient Taliban-in-waiting for Egypt, its only moves toward moderation made for the sake of taking Egyptian government heat off it for tactical reasons. Not surprisingly, Weigel and Yglesias are, as usual, 180 degrees wrong here.

|5.4.07 @ 11:23PM|#

Let me add one more thing, that the two faced "moderate" Muslim groups are a bigger threat to our civillization then the terrorists.

Al-Qaida massacres thousands of Americans and even Howard Dean democrats demand we fight back. Those that don't are shouted down as unpatriotic, we kill a lot of terrorists, and all is good. Videos of people getting their heads sawed off doesn't help the jihadi cause.

Groups like CAIR, on the other hand, appeal to the cowardly desire to think that all desires of all people are reconciable. Riot over some cartoons and we voluntarily surrender freedom of speech. In Britain, Muslims march the streets openly demanding the destruction of their state and do so on free speech grounds. Liberal naivete and cowardice results in the Balkanization of our societies and our eventual submission to the teachings of the prophet.

Extremists already have neighborhoods in France and other European countries where the police dare not go. These parts of the state weren't lost, they were surrendered. And it wasn't due to terrorism.

dhex|5.5.07 @ 10:50AM|#

first

Seitz | May 4, 2007, 1:43pm | #
"If it's Brown, and it kneels down to pray a few times every day in the same direction, it must be destroyed. That's what the base wants to hear. There is no difference between bad Muslims and good Muslims because they're all BAD MUSLIMS."

fair enough

then the heavens opened up and all those fucking chickens i've sacrificed to satan paid off because captain toothache jumps in with:

Grand Chalupa | May 4, 2007, 1:51pm | #
"The Muslim Brotherhood has the same goals as Al-Qaida, they just have different methods."

THANK YOU OH DARK LORD!

"Some civillians got caught up in the killing too, but you know, its a tough world."

are you available for childrens' parties?

or is that too capitulationist for you? you know, having to tone down all the Eurabia Puppet Show Honor Killings Playtime Happy Hour for a kid's audience?

|5.5.07 @ 12:43PM|#

"--it shouldn't be interesting to anyone but his synchophants, which I assume are nerdy 15 year old manhattanites who attend the "cool, progressive" private schools in New York."

See one Weigel, Dave. Although I think Weigel went to Northwestern so substitute Chicago for New York in that sentence. Yglesies is just sleezy. He knows better but doesn't care and puts out rediculous stuff like this all the time, facts be damend. Weigel in contrast really is just that stupid.

dhex|5.5.07 @ 1:52PM|#

how cool would it be if the RNC convention keynote speaker came out to slayer's "war ensemble"?

WAR SUPPORT!
SUPPORT THE WAR!

|5.5.07 @ 6:57PM|#

The Muslim Brotherhood has the same goals as Al-Qaida, they just have different methods.

The fact that liberals find nothing wrong with an orginization that wants the world under Sharia law as long as they don't commit terrorist acts shows what pussies they are and why they shouldn't be taken seriously.

You've described the MB as an organization that "want's the world under Sharia law and doesn't commit terrorist acts". If you replace Sharia with Biblical Law, how does this make them any different from Pat Robertson, et al?

Now, if they do ever take power in Egypt, I doubt we'll see them extolling the virtues of separation of Church and State, and their more violent members did form Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the precursor to al-Qaeda. But part of the reason for their popularity is the fact that they are the only effective outlet for dissent against the ruling elite. (Like Assad in Syria, Mubarak is planning on having his son succeed him).

Regarding Hama, Assad didn't just launch a surgical strike or even a sustained crackdown of the Brotherhood. He flattened the entire town. This would be like Reno ordering the saturation bombing of all of Waco during the Branch Davidian standoff.

Keep in mind that there are different Brotherhood organization throughout the middle east, some hostile to each other. Factionalization seems to be a common thread in the Mid East: see Iraqi Ba'ath Party vs. Syrian Ba'ath Party, Islamic Jihad vs. Hamas, Hezbollah vs. Amal...

|5.5.07 @ 9:13PM|#

Now, if they do ever take power in Egypt, I doubt we'll see them extolling the virtues of separation of Church and State, and their more violent members did form Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the precursor to al-Qaeda. But part of the reason for their popularity is the fact that they are the only effective outlet for dissent against the ruling elite.

Do you think that's a coincidence or that it tells you something about the societies as a whole?

|5.6.07 @ 12:16AM|#

Wait...is this the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Brotherhood of Muslims? Or is it the Judean People's Front or the People's Front of Judea?

Bloody splitters!

|5.7.07 @ 3:22PM|#

"You lot, you just eat chips, watch telly and go to bed, when all the while there's a war going on!"

rose|5.9.07 @ 6:35PM|#

goooooooooo mitt romney


yessssssss