Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on October 8, 2012

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's campaign promised he would outline a "stark contrast" between his proposals and President Obama's "failed" efforts to put an American stamp on the evolving face of the Middle East.

But a closer look at Romney's remarks today in Virginia reveal a varied gameplan, with some policies surprisingly similar to the president's and others, as advertised, broadly divergent.

The split is evident when one considers the composition of Romney's staff, one expert said, noting that the candidate has drawn from all corners of the Republican tent.

"There's an old adage to the affect that 'personnel is policy,'" and Romney's staff is "very much divided between the Neocon pole and the more traditionally Realist pole," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow William Galston said after the speech. "And if press reports are to be believed, Romney has taken advice from both. This is a pretty good camp strategy for keeping both sides of Republican establishment happy. What it means down the road has not been clarified."

From Libya to the Israelis and Palestinians, with mentions of Iran, Egypt, Al Qaeda and Syria pressed between, Romney hit all the Middle Eastern hotspots. Here's a case-by-case look at where the Republican set himself apart from President Obama and the issues on which they do, in fact, share more common ground than one might expect.

Romney said he would "pursue a real and successful transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014," right in line with the Obama timeline for withdrawal. Romney qualified this by saying he would "evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders" before making that decision.

When asked after the speech if Romney would, in fact, delay the return home of American troops from Afghanistan if he wasn't satisfied with the situation on the ground, his campaign would not offer a definitive response.

"I read the speech as opening up that question without giving an answer to it," Galston said of Romney potentially extending U.S. troops' stay in the country. "Obama's commitment to a date is pretty unequivocal. I don't read Romney's commitment as being similarly unequivocal. I guess the Romney campaign is entitled to say we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I do think that refusing to endorse is distinction worth notice. What its cash value is remains to be seen."

Daniel Serwer, a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins, said he'd be surprised if Romney veered too far from Obama's planned road home.

"He might push it back a couple of months," Serwer said in an email, "but he has never suggested anything more dramatic than that. This is a distinction without a difference."

Continue reading here:
Is Romney's 'Stark Contrast' Really That Stark?

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