Posted on 08/18/2012 6:34:23 AM PDT by SoConPubbie
Last week, Mitt Romney hired Richard Grenell as his new foreign policy spokesman. Grenell was President Bush’s communications director at the United Nations for eight years, and has been a spokesman for a handful of prominent Republicans such as George Pataki and Dave Camp.
Along with his qualifications, Grenell is also gay.
When the campaign announced the hire, Grenell’s sexual orientation wasn’t noted in media coverage, nor, arguably, should it have been. He got in a bit of a tangle for scrubbing his Twitter profile to erase messages he wrote about Newt Gingrich and his wife, but that was about the only newsworthy development in the hiring announcement.
That is, until a gay-bashing radio host at the American Family Association wrote in his blog that by appointing Grenell, Romney was telling the so-called pro-family community to “drop dead.” CNN amplified that message from Bryan Fischer by inviting him on for an interview.
“The homosexual agenda represents the single-greatest threat to religious liberty and freedom of association in America today,” Fischer declared.
The problem, gay Republicans say, is not that homophobes like Fischer are still around but that a person’s sexual orientation is still newsworthy enough to provide a cheap story or mini-controversy.
Grenell isn’t the first gay person Romney has hired, and he probably won’t be the last.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
appointing Grenell, Romney was telling the so-called pro-family community to “drop dead.”
____________________________________________
Willard told us that years ago...
Starting with Jimmy Carter every democrat president has caused me to quickly turn the channel when he came on. Romney is the first republican candidate to provoke the same reaction. Just looking at him repulses me. His very facial expressions say, "I'm lying through my teeth".
Gee, a flip-flopper just like Mitt...takes the job then wimps out.
The fact that he resigned doesn't change the lack of discernment by Romney...OR was it "discernment" by Romney, or just plain old pandering to the gay voters?...
There are scenarios in which that might happen. God is in control. Keep praying.
The fact that he resigned doesn't change the lack of discernment by Romney...OR was it "discernment" by Romney, or just plain old pandering to the gay voters?..
LOL! Should have known one of the bigots would report such an innocuous post to JR.
However, I have concerns about the Grenell issue being brought up now.
First, it's an article from April. That's not decisive — old news can be important news — but why now? The fact is that this openly homosexual Republican resigned from the position to which Romney appointed him (good) while making clear that being openly gay was not an issue to Romney (not good).
Here's Grenell’s full statement of resignation: “I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.”
John Bolton tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of resigning. Maybe we need to be asking questions about Bolton too, but I think it's obvious Bolton is much better than Romney.
More to the point, I did some digging on him. Interesting stuff.
He's the son of Church of God missionaries. He's anti-abortion and has strong words for those who aren't. That's good.
“He also dislikes those who can’t handle the hard questions — cuts in the budget, abortion. If you won’t toe the line, Grenell has a handy label for you. “Squish,” he says of Christine Todd Whitman, the pro-choice Republican governor of New Jersey. This is not a compliment.”
On the negative side, he's a big fan of Ariana Huffington.
According to Huffington Post, he was a blogger for Huffington Post until a month before his resignation.
According to ThinkProgress, “He also asserted that President Obama’s children should be fair game for political debate.”
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/04/20/468736/richard-grenell-twitter-women/?mobile=nc
This isn't just a social conservative issue. His comments about Newt Gingrich's marital background and attacks on Callista Gingrich are at a level that would raise major concerns for lots of Freepers who are Gingrich supporters, and even Gingrich opponents (me included) who think mocking comments about a candidate's wife are not appropriate.
Can anyone imagine something like this being tolerated on Free Republic: “At the debate before that, ahead of the Florida primary on Jan. 23, Grenell cracked: ‘newt will win this question because he had 3 families!’ On the previous day, he wondered: ‘what’s higher? The number of jobs newt's created or the number of wives he's had?’”
He also mocked Rick Santorum on Twitter with this Feb.. 22 statement: “im rick santorum and gay people should be deported”
Jennifer Rubin, author of “Right Turn” over at the Washington Post, says Grenell was forced out by “anti-gay conservatives”:
The National Review Online says that “Grenell is more passionate about same-sex marriage than anything else.”
With all this awful stuff about Grenell, I think the real question ought to be how the Romney campaign could **POSSIBLY** even consider appointing him to a prominent position. Maybe the problem isn't that Romney is pro-gay, but rather that Romney is a poor manager.
Anyone in management has hired bad people, but this is pretty bad. I wouldn't expect something like this to happen at the national level of politics.
The Washington Post's statement was that “He was hired through the policy side of the campaign — not the political side, where a different level of vetting occurs.”
Okay, maybe. I get the point that lower-level policy functionaries who won't attract lots of public attention may do good work for a campaign as long as they stay behind the scenes and keep quiet. But this guy was going to be a policy **SPOKESMAN.**
Wouldn't it be obvious to anyone with access to Google that this guy was radioactive?
Based on Grenell’s biography in the citations I provided in my last post — fiscal conservative, hard-right on deficits, long history of fiery internet activism — he fits the profile of a MittBot on Free Republic.
Do you have reason to believe that Grenell has a Free Republic account and is using it to be disruptive?
Your boy Romney says such things are just Socon issues and he's all about the economy and jobs and can't be bothered.
As Grenell proved, the first thing on Romney's mind was jobs for gays! What you think he thinks about Christians being crucified? Is he against it, for it, just doesn't care one way or the other?
Let's hear what he has to say.
I still hear from talk-show people and others use the ridiculous expression, "What people do in the bedrooms is none of any one else's business."
But sodomy has now been made a socio-political issue that goes way outside the bedromms of the sodomoites. They never intended to keep it in their bedrooms, but insist that it be in our face.
Bedrooms, nothing ! They want it in the classromms, the court houses (sodomite so-called marriage), in the legislatures and in the political campaigns. They still want to force us to recognize legitimacy in it, and we had better never do it !
Awesome! This is JUST the guy we need as the Republican nominee! He’s FAB-ulous!
/
What's a "bigot"? Someone you're losing an argument to?
Don't you just hate having a Republican nominee whose followers have to expend strenuous effort to hide his stances from the public?
Real men don’t bend over under pressure.
Huh? And just what argument would that be?
You, my friend, are a complete loon. I'm not even going to ask what you are referring to. Do you even know what you write anymore or is that the only reason you copy and paste ancient articles? That the thought process can't last more than a second or two before you start short-circuiting?
I don't know, whatever argument you were losing to have to fall back onto the leftist-style whiner name-calling option.
If "When the campaign announced the hire, Grenell’s sexual orientation wasn’t noted in media coverage" is "pandering to the gay voters," Romney's people seriously need a remedial course in pandering!
The guy had spent eight years at the UN for Bush's administration. He appeared qualified and politically vetted to speak for a Republican presidential candidate on foreign affairs.
You would ban such people, without regard to their aptitude for a job, forcing them to become invisible and thus creating the very threats and risks you claim to oppose. It isn't rational and doesn't achieve your goals, only exacerbates the problem you see.
John Bolton's support for this man gives me pause. Bolton is not naive. If Bolton saw something useful in him, others could legitimately do so as well.
**HOWEVER** — look at the stuff I dug up about him with a five minute Google search. He was posting things on his Twitter feed that would infuriate virtually everyone on Free Republic, not just the social conservatives. Highly offensive comments about Newt Gingrich's marriages, Callista Gingrich's physical appearance, Rick Santorum’s views on homosexuals. And then nasty comments about the physical appearance of other women.
Campaigns can't have someone like that as a policy spokesman. This looks like he was a train wreck waiting to happen, even without being homosexual.
I wonder about the professionalism of Romney's internal vetting process for his policy staff if something like this could happen.
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