The Republican/Tea Party has picked up on Sen. (and some would say sore loser) John McCain’s almost laughable faux outrage over President Obama’s new political ad that raises questions about Mitt Romney’s willingness to kill terrorist Osama bin Laden (Obama authorized the U.S. military raid in Pakistan that ended with bin Laden’s death one year ago this week).
“Shame on Barack Obama,” McCain in a statement on Friday, “for diminishing the memory of Sept. 11 and the killing of Osama Bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political ad.”
Watch the Obama ad:
“This is one of the reasons President Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American history,” said former Bush aide and current Romney adviser Ed Gillespie on yesterday’s NBC’s Meet The Press.
“He took something that was a unifying event for all Americans – an event that Gov. Romney congratulated him and the military and the intelligence analysts in our government for completing the mission in terms of killing Osama bin Laden – and he’s managed to turn it into a divisive partisan political attack.”
So the party that uses the elephant as its symbol may have no memory, but the rest of us all remember how Republicans milked the horror of 9/11 in an attempt to paint U.S. Senator and decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry as unfit to be commander-in-chief in 2004.
Watch the videos:
And the GOP continued to exploit 9/11 four years later, showing this video at the 2008 Republican National Convention that nominated McCain for president (and Sarah Palin for vice president. Wait, Palin was fit for vice president in ’08, but Kerry wasn’t fit for the presidency in ’04?? OK, we’ll save that for another post):
Romney said today he definitely would have ordered the U.S. military strike that killed bin Laden if he had been president.
“Of course,’” Romney told reporters after a campaign rally. “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”
Obama responded today:
“I just recommend that everybody take a look at people’s previous statements in terms of what they thought was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden,” Obama said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. “I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, then I would go ahead and let them explain it.” Watch the video: But Romney is so “against politicizing 9/11” that he’s planning to appear at event tomorrow with former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani here in New York. And that announcement prompted us to make another trip down memory – to Vice President Joe Biden’s classic 2007 quote that may have destroyed Giuliani’s chances for national political office. “Rudy Giuliani. There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence — a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There’s nothing else! There’s nothing else!” Biden said during a msnbc presidential debate (when Biden was a senator running for the presidency): Ed will have a lot to say about this issue tonight on The Ed Show at 8pET on msnbc with msnbc Political Analyst Richard Wolffe. Remember when President George W. Bush’s use of Mission Accomplished?
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