The repellent conservative hypocrisy, cont.

Both the editors and the commenters at Lucianne.com are treating the events in Egypt and Libya as an opportunity to attack Obama. This is disgusting. The Republican Party, including Romney, has been completely on board with the championing of Islamic democracy, meaning the promotion of rule by the Muslim Brotherhood. It is contemptible for conservatives to condemn only Democrats for doing things that the Republicans are also doing.

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Karl D. writes:

Romney just made a statement on the Libya attack and incident in Cairo. It went something like this:

“Blah blah blah lead, blah blah leadership, blah blah must make sure Arab spring doesn’t turn into Arab winter.”

Doesn’t fill one with confidence, does it? Why do I get the feeling that a Romney administration would be nothing more than Bush 2.0?

LA replies:

Romney is very bad on the Muslim issue, but, to be fair, he has never been a passionate advocate of the Democracy Project. Which doesn’t mean he wouldn’t continue supporting it.

Richard W. writes:

Romney’s initial criticism was of the Obama administration’s reflex comments after the initial embassy raid which condemned the film maker who has made a documentary critical of Mohammed.

This seems a legitimate area of criticism. Obama is always apologizing for America. He also has a bad habit of blaming the wrong person in many situations. From the very start of his presidential career, when he wrongly blamed a policeman for doing his job, he has frequently blamed the victim.

After the invasion of the embassy in Egypt and the desecration of our flag by a mob of Islamic militants here was the Obama administration’s first response:

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions,”

This was followed up by a clarification by Hillary Clinton:

“The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind,”

It does seem that these statement are worthy of criticism, regardless of one’s position on the overthrow of the governments of Egypt and Libya. It is never right to invade embassies and kill ambassadors, and that is the point one would expect the administration to make. The ire of the mob was over a film which the USA had no part in creating.

Hillary and the Obama administration are clearly a step further along the path to dhimmitude than the mass of conservatives, who, whatever other failings of logic they have vis-a-vis Islam, still support the rights of artists to produce work critical of others beliefs. The State Department deplores and condemns such art when it offends Muslim sensibility.

Romney was right to condemn these statements.

Daniel F. writes:

You write that Romney does not seem to be a particularly passionate advocate of the Democracy Project.

I would say that Romney is a passionate advocate of only two things: (1) that Americans should continue to be able to get rich the way he did; and (2) that he should be president. Other than those concepts, he doesn’t seem to have any deeply held political beliefs.

Unfortunately, he was the best conservatives could do this year. That says a lot about the wreck American conservatism has become.

LA replies:

Of course the ‘sadministration’s statements were worthy of criticism and were a disgrace, as Romney said. But this is secondary to the fact that the GOP has no position on the Muslim Democracy Project distinct from Obama’s, except to grumble that he’s moving too fast on it or moving too slow. It is not worth expending a single ounce of one’s energy defending Republicans on any issue relating to foreign policy and particularly Islam policy. They are part of the problem.

Daniel F. writes:

I agree with your point about Republicans being hypocritical in berating Obama over what’s happened to the Arab Spring, when the Republicans generally (with some exceptions) have supported this repellant movement just as much as the Obama administration has, with just as much blindness to its likely outcome. The Republican hypocrisy in this regard reminds me of the hypocrisy of Democrats attempting to blame the financial crisis on the Republicans when the crisis resulted from policies that had nearly unanimous support from both parties, and the impetus for most of those policies came primarily from the Left.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 12, 2012 10:22 AM | Send