Mitt Romney - The Wimp Factor, Part 1

In April, Romney appointed Richard Grenell to act as his campaign advisor on foreign affairs. On May 1, after being told that he could listen but not speak during a conference call discussion of foreign policy, (a conference call that he had organized), Mr. Grenell resigned.

what eye thynk: Despite Mr. Grenell’s shaky history of tactless postings on his Twitter account, (I have to admit I thought his tweet about Callista’s hair “snapping on” was pretty funny), he certainly held the right credentials to become Mr. Romney’s foreign policy advisor having served as Director of Communications for four ambassadors to the U.N. under George W.

So why did he quit? Well, Frank VanderSloot, national finance co-chair of the Romney campaign, didn’t like him and Bryan Fischer, ringleader of the American Family Association liked him even less.

(Incidentally, Mr. VanderSloot is also one of the biggest donors to Romney’s super PAC “Restore Our Future”. What happened to all those safeguards that the Supreme Court said were in place to keep campaigns and super PACs separate?)

Mr. VanderSloot has a long record of anti-gay sentiment. In 1999 he underwrote an Iowa anti-gay billboard campaign in an attempt to stop a public television broadcast of a documentary dealing with the way teachers handled homosexual issues in the classroom. Billboards reading “Should public television promote the homosexual lifestyle to your children?” appeared all over the state. At the time, Mr. VanderSloot was quoted as saying” Why is public TV, paid for by our tax dollars, going to show this to our families, our children?” (Note to Mr. V: Gay people pay taxes too.)

Once Mr. Grenell was gone, it didn’t take long for the conservative far right to see their opportunity to steer Romney, calling him “maneuverable”, Bryan Fischer wrote: “Gov. Romney is a politician rather than a statesman. While he will not do the right thing out of political conviction, he will do the right thing out of political convenience. Since Gov. Romney will do the right thing when it is politically expedient, it's our job to make it politically expedient for him to do the right thing on as many issues as possible. Let's get cracking.”.
 
A Romney spokesman tried to smooth over the issue by saying that Mr. Grenell quit for “his own personal reasons”, but not before another Republican campaign advisor was quoted as saying “It’s not that the campaign cared whether Ric Grenell was gay. They believed this was a non issue. But they didn’t want to confront the religious right”.
 
As President, you will have to confront someone some time, Mr. Romney. If you can’t stand up now, I don’t see much hope for you as a leader. The presidency of the United States of America is no place for a wimp.