Associated Press
Historically, the political world doesn't pay too much attention to who presidential campaigns bring on as policy advisors, but it's hard to deny the significance of these staffers. For one thing, they help shape a candidate's worldview, especially when a presidential hopeful lacks ideas and principles of his own. For another, should the candidate actually win, the advisors will probably end up with powerful jobs in the new administration.
And who has Mitt Romney's ear? On foreign policy, one of the top members of his team is Dan Senor.
Dan Senor is less known to the general public, but familiar to those who’ve followed the Iraq debacle closely. From 2003 to 2004, Senor served as a Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman under Paul Bremer. After that smashing success, Senor returned to Washington, where, among other things, in September 2004 he helped write speeches for Iraqi interim prime minister Ayad Allawi’s U.S. visit, and then apparently went on television to praise those speeches as evidence of Bush’s accomplishments in Iraq.
It was Senor, a leading neoconservative, who boasted in October 2003, "The good news is that the overwhelming majority of Iraqi people have embraced the liberation and are grateful for all we are doing to reconstruct their country."
He wasn't kidding.
When Team Romney needs a credible GOP voice to attack the Obama administration's foreign policy and advice the inexperienced former governor on international affairs, it turns to this guy.
Remember, the Republican National Committee believes the party's agenda in 2013 will simply be a warmed over version of Bush's policies. Romney surrounding himself with officials from the Bush/Cheney administration helps drive the point home.
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If it walks like a Bush, flies like a Bush and quacks like a Bush, it's Romney.
New ad for the President - keeping looping all of Bush's guys talking about "those flowers that would be thrown at American G.I's feet" along with the numbers of wounded, displaced and dead Americans/Iraqi civilians - then have the announcer speak over these visuals saying "Mitt Romney wants to bring these people back to government - and Iran is next on the hit list".
Final screen image - GOP these guys are too dangerous for Americans!
You'll have to get a Super-PAC to do that ad, the DNC wouldn't hear of it!
You are right the DNC wouldn't want to do anything that might reflect badly on the DC Republican elite.
RM, Paul Senor is, by career definition, a master of DRIFT...that brazen, bold, riveting, best-selling new Rachel Maddow book, available where books are sold. After Senor read it,"I can only wish that I had it when I was in the Bush. DRIFT allowed me to fly out of the Bush and be caught in the Mitt, on the first flyover."(sort of)
Which brings us to today's "What Up..Who Dat?" Quick Quiz: DRIFT..what up, what is it? Pick the most correct answer, or enter your own...Choices: A) a Dobie Gray classic song. B)type of wood found on carribean beach. C) MSNBC host's new, best-selling book. D) something that happens during a Republican Rally 2012. E) easing into sleep mode. F) Movement your car makes while you are texting. VOTE NOW.
END. All above fictional. Not responsible for errors. Any similarity to real person(s), event(s), and/or place(s) coincidental. No wagering. GO.
I was tempted to think that Sensor is a young guy, maybe he learned something from his Iraq experience, but then I realized NeoCons never learn. They keep wanting to use the same tool for every foreign policy job. They really get off on killing people and squandering money. They are relentlessly one note warmongers. America would be better off is Sensor were selling shoes at the local Payless.
I guess Romney had to hire someone. He's led a very insular life and knows nothing about foreign affairs. For that matter, he doesn't know too much about American affairs. He knew he needed help, so he hired 16 of Bush's 19 advisors. Apparently he thinks Bush did a great job. Talk about out in left field.......................
Romney will surround himself with the Bush idiots and we will go back to 2000 to 2008.Deja vu?In other words your future is in the past.More tax breaks for the wealty More deregulation of Wall St.More subsidies for big oil etc.
Ah Paul Bremer, good times.. Is he in jail yet?
I'm imagining the conversation back home with Campbell:
"Dammit, Dan, I gave up a good job to raise these two kids, you're worthless around the house - the least you could do is go earn some money. Can't any of those schmucks you used to work with give you a job?"
"Um, hi, Mitt. . ."
With the all the comments of inexperience that flowed around Obama when he was first running for President, nothing was ever said about the "half-term quitter" Palin and of course, Romney could only manage one term, which his "home state" says he screwed. He needs all the liars he can get.
In regard to the current VA report on the VA not doing well by its veterans, Ms. Maddow should know that there is nothing surprising in this report. As a Vietnam veteran and volunteer at a VA Outreach Center, where is the report on how ineffective VA care for PTSD has turned out to be? During the Vietnam War, so-called civil rights leaders were very vocal about the high percentage of blacks assigned to trigger-puller slots in relation to their percentage of the whole U.S. Army. During this current Global War On Terror or GWOT, the percentage of minorities in U.S. Army Special Forces, Ranger, and combat infantry units is incredibly under-represented. Yet, the number of minorities, including women, seeking treatment for PTSD is disproportionately greater than their exposure to actual combat stress. The quality of care for PTSD is not going to improve until it becomes a women's issue. Then the women in the U.S. Congress will be out in front of it. After all, it isn't as if those veterans needing treatment are their own children. Their children don't serve.
Romney's utilizing Dan Senor as a foreign policy "expert" is like using G. Gordon Liddy as his ethics adviser. Will he make the captain of the Costa Concordia the Secretary of the Navy? The Paul Bremer-Dan Senor Iraqi FIASCO was America's biggest foreign policy debacle in the past 50 years. And Romney selects one of the architects of it as his foreign policy adviser. This is BEYOND HILARIOUS!