Romney Evokes Hitler To Depict Perilous Middle East
BOCA RATON, FLA. -- John McCain and Rudy Giuliani may be the GOP candidates best known for their tough talk on national security, but this morning Mitt Romney used one of history's greatest villains to paint a stark picture of just how dangerous the world has become in his view.
Romney said that in the run up to World War II, appeasers believed Hitler's "press releases," which said that he merely wanted to unite German-speaking peoples, rather than eliminate an entire race.
"The consequences of that accommodation of his press releases was devastating to the entire world, and most devastating to millions of Jews," Romney said to about 200 people at a Republican Jewish Coalition of Florida function. "Today we have individuals who believe that the cause of the challenges in the Middle East is the conflict in Israel with the Palestinians, and that if somehow we could just have the Baker-Hamilton Commission imposed and we could just settle things between the Palestinians and the Israelis, why everything would be fine in the Middle East."
Romney went on to ridicule the belief that the land dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians is largely responsible for the root causes of upheaval in the region.
"The idea that somehow boundaries between Israel and the Palestinian authority are what's causing the challenges in the Middle East is patently absurd," Romney said.
As the economy continues to spiral downward, Romney has cultivated an image for himself as a Washington outsider whose fresh ideas come from his years in the private sector. Romney also hopes to extend this image into the realm of foreign policy, as Romney has been highly critical of the State Department bureaucracy.
"We simply cannot go on as a nation kicking the ball down the field," Romney said. "We simply cannot go on with our foreign policy as disjointed and uncoordinated as it is, even within our nation and around the world."