,
7 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
As someone who helped prepare Russia talking points for several GOP presidential candidates over the last 11 years, that Obama-Romney debate moment will forever be seared in my brain.
It wasn't just that Romney was right and Obama was wrong, as was obvious to anyone paying attention at the time. It was taking the clever soundbite over the substance of a critical national security issue.
By the time of that final debate, Oct. 22, 2012, Putin had shredded Obama's naive "reset" policy. He'd completed his destruction of Russian democracy & civil society, returning formally to the presidency in March. (Obama called to congratulate him.)
Instead of addressing the failure of their Russia policy, let alone fix it, the Obama position was always to declare victory and ignore reality—something many from his admin continue to do today, even after the massive damage of 2015-16 on their watch.
There's been little news about Obama's memoir and I think one reason is they don't know how to massage the Russia catastrophe until they can spin whatever comes out of the Mueller report, etc.
Some of the replies to this are further evidence that the American left's consciousness of the threat of Putin's Russia begins on Nov 8, 2016, and never one minute earlier. It's as if Trump created Putin and not the other way around.
The GOP's flip to defend Trump's embrace of Putin was, and is, indefensible and catastrophic. But we shouted about it for years and other Cardin and a few others (RIP Tom Lantos), Dems followed Obama's "no Russian drama" line.
