Richard Grenell, recently hired by the Mitt Romney for President campaign to serve as the GOP presidential contender's national security spokesman, has resigned.
His statement:
I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman.
While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama's foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign.
I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.
This is as wrong for the Romney team to do as it was for the Obama team to fire Obama campaign Muslim American outreach director Mazen Asbahi for distant acquaintances from years previous that were stirring up anti-Obama, anti-Islamic agitants in the US.
Allowing Grenell to resign, and the same is true of Asbahi, just fuels the confidence and status of bigots who undermine big tent, inclusive democracy.
I was just telling Washington Post editor Fred Hiatt this weekend how impressed I was with hyper-conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin's statements on Ric Grenell, the GOP, and the party's anti-gay bigotry. I have almost never agreed with Rubin on her world view but on this, I salute her and think that she was dead on target.
Her kicker line in the essay was important:
When Steve Clemons and Jennifer Rubin actually agree on something, but the GOP gives in to the rants of American Family Association policy director Bryan Fischer and his ilk -- one gets a sense of how really tumorous and distorted certain powerful wings of the Republican Party have become.It would be a positive thing for the [Republican] party and our country if it was crystal clear there is no place in civil discourse for those fanning the flames of hatred toward gays and egging on fellow conservatives to discriminate against gays in hiring. Unfortunately, not everyone on the right agrees.
The Republican Party needs to re-center itself, recapture the core values it used to believe in, and bring in the likes of Richard Grenell to create a much healthier party. That is probably a long way off but it needs to happen not only so conservatives can be taken seriously again but because democracy needs sound alternatives.
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1) Social conservatives will see this as more evidence that Romney doesn't really support their views and distrust him even more
2) Conservatives who aren't anti-gay will be disappointed that Romney didn't support the person he had chosen to be his advisor
3) Many people will wonder why Romney couldn't foresee that social conservatives would object to his choice of advisors, since it makes no sense to appoint someone only to let them resign two weeks later after you've failed to defend them from attacks
4) Romney's inability to even openly say why his advisor resigned makes him look incredibly weak to just about everyone, regardless of their position on gay issues
This guy is no loss.
This guy is no loss
Have to agree with you there. Gay or straight isn't the problem for the GOP , and the nation.It is the inability of the to deal with ANY topic in an honest way. It's fine to say one would do something (specifics please) differently from the President. But Republicans prefer to use unqualified adjectives to attack everything while offering up the same left-overs from the 50's.
Amen
I Miss her too !
Black republicans
Female republicans
Latino republicans
Working class and lower level income republicans
Never going to happen. The right-wingers have tasted what it is like to be an A-1 reactionary movement in all its fearsome aspects. Fueled by a perversion of the religion they profess to follow, they wallow in the hatred and condemnation. To them, love and compassion are only to be mocked and persecuted. Guess what? They like it that way. They are a lost cause.
If Mitt Romney doesn't have the personal character to publicly stand up to anti-gay bigots, then he simply doesn't have the strength of personal character necessary to be President.