Debate Three

Apparently Romney will be spending the next few days preparing for the Foreign Policy debate on Monday. Since he has little knowledge and no experience that prep will probably consist of memorizing neoconservative talking points.  When it comes to foreign policy Obama himself is to the right of the country and Romney will have to go to the right of Obama to please his neocon advisers.  

Daniel Larison:

This [Foreign Policy] has remained one of Romney’s biggest weaknesses for a few reasons, the most important of which is that he simply hasn’t spent enough time or paid enough attention to these issues to be as well-versed in them as he should be. There are many things that aren’t Romney’s “natural” subjects, but he doesn’t struggle with any other kind of policy as much as he struggles with this one. As a former governor, it is understandable that he prefers talking about domestic policy issues, but favoring this preference has caused him to neglect foreign policy to a remarkable degree for someone who has been running for president since 2006. Until now, most voters likely haven’t noticed the result of this neglect, but they will see it in Monday’s debate.

As Larison points out when it comes to Foreign Policy Romney sounds a lot like Bush 2.0, not something the war weary citizens of the United States are ready for.  The lesson most Americans take from the Libyan incident is we simply shouldn't be there not that we should have hundreds of armed guards or Marines.  So he has to please is neocon masters and at the same time not scare the American people - not an easy task. 

It would be reasonable for the questioner and the public to conclude from his response that there aren’t any major differences between Romney and Bush on foreign policy. That is what all of the other evidence to date confirms, and given the opportunity to distinguish himself on foreign policy Romney opted to talk about other things. Romney could correct that oversight in Monday’s debate, but I wouldn’t count on it. If losing the foreign policy debate means that Romney “probably won’t win” the election, as Kristol says, then Romney probably won’t win.