Mitt Romney should quit the act. He is the most effete candidate ever. As phony as a person as he is, he comes across even more ridiculous every time he tries to claim he is tough.
The biggest joke in the Republican 'debate' on foreign policy is that tough-guy Mitt Romney will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. The mullahs must be cowering.
A short litany of Romney's phony toughness:
Challenged about his "lifetime membership" in the NRA, Romney claimed that he occasionally hunted varmints (to hunt anything else, he would need a license -- he never had one!).
Romney escaped the Vietnam War draft because daddy -- the Governor of Michigan -- arranged for him to be exempted as a religious missionary for the Mormon Church. Did he serve in some third world country, bringing god to the poor? Hell no, Willard spent two years dining on escargots and soufflés as a missionary in France
While in France, Mitt claimed a longing to be with his brothers fighting in Vietnam. Oddly, when his French mission was completed and he returned to the US, that longing seemed to have vanished. Well, perhaps not so oddly.
Romney claimed that he was waiting, hoping (dare one say, praying?), to be called, but somehow, dagnabbit, he never received that letter from Uncle Sam. One can only imagine his daily disappointment awaiting that letter that never popped through the mansion's mail slit.
For six years, it just never occurred to macho-Mitt to follow John Kerry's lead and volunteer.
Fast-forward to post-9/11, the Afghanistan War, and then the Bush/Cheney Iraq War. Like father like sons, not a single one of Mitt's 5 sons followed Pat Tillman's example to relinquish their lucrative careers and fight for their country. And, this at the time that their daddy was proclaiming himself even more supportive of Bush/Cheney policies than Bush and Cheney themselves -- close Guantanomo? Willard suggested we double its size. Tough guy, isn't he?
But, even more instructive about Mitt himself, was his knee-jerk response to an Iowa voter who asked him why none of his sons had volunteered. "Thank god we have an all-volunteer army" was Romney's immediate answer that got less press coverage than his next comment that their tooling around Iowa in a Winnebago to support his presidential run was "more patriotic" than volunteering for wars that their daddy claimed to support... i.e., so long as other peoples' children were fighting it.
There may be good reasons to have an all-volunteer army -- to Romney its main benefit is that he could champion wars without any member of his family risking their life or limbs. Romney's position is a very good reason to have a draft -- at least for military age children of high government officials. Let them determine what a great idea a war is if their own children will be fighting it.
And just how is Romney going to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb? Step up sanctions? President Obama has been more successful in getting Russia and China to support sanctions than the neocons with whom Romney is desperately trying to identify himself ever were. And, Obama is psychologically secure enough to have been incredibly tough when required (e.g., getting bin Laden, development of stuxnet virus) without pounding his chest, a much more effective way to attract allies and support.
The biggest risk of Romney as president is that, like George W Bush, he would try to prove "his" toughness by launching a war.
That is no joke.