It smells like triangulation to me. As I’ve said many times, I think there’s a lot to like about Romney — but this is exactly why I haven’t been able to trust him.
HH: Thanks for joining us. Have you been able to follow this story?
MR: Well, you know, you sort of follow it from afar as you’re from place to place. And I think anybody who looks at the story hears what Rush Limbaugh has to say, which of course makes perfect sense. He was referring to this soldier who had doctored up his resume, was a phony soldier. And he was critical of that soldier, and he had every right to be critical of that soldier. And it’s amazing to watch the Democrats turn that into something which clearly he had not intended to make it. And certainly, with his explanation, people should say oh, okay, I understand what you were saying, what you mean. I understand the context. And that’s fine.
HH: Now Governor, when I got to the studio today, I called your staff, because my mailbox was full of e-mails saying why is Governor Romney down on Rush. Did that catch you by surprise that somehow you’d become part of this story?
MR: Gosh, I didn’t know I had become part of the story. That just shows how you’re running around the country and you hear those things. Surely, the comment which he made today, or yesterday, where he said look, you have to understand, I wasn’t referring to all soldiers who oppose the war, I was referring to this soldier as a phony soldier. That makes sense, and you know, you take the man at his word. That’s what he was referring to, and you know, he’s got a long record of supporting our soldiers. There’s no question that this is a man who has been very much on the side of our fighting men and women, but somebody who’s doctored their resume is not somebody who he or anybody else is going to stand up for.
HH: Now this strikes me as an attempt by the MoveOn.org left, allied with some Democratic Senators, to turn attention away from the attack on General Petraeus made a few weeks ago, and an attempt to rebrand themselves as pro-military. How do you assess the effectiveness of trying to escape the effect of the MoveOn.org attack on General Petraeus?
MR: Well, it’s a very different setting. In the case of MoveOn.org, they actually ran an ad, and they said that General Petraeus will betray us, and that is an extraordinary challenge to make for a person who is risking his life for the security and safety of our country, and that’s outrageous. The Democrats wouldn’t distance themselves from it and denounce it, and that was to their dishonor. In this case, Rush’s statement taken out of context appears to say something which he explains he did not mean to say, that he instead was referring to an individual soldier who had doctored his resume. They’re entirely different matters, and you know, the lefties will believe what the lefties want to believe, but the truth of the matter is Rush Limbaugh supports our troops, and supports the rights of Americans to express their views. After all, he does that very thing day in and day out.
“It smells like triangulation to me. As I’ve said many times, I think there’s a lot to like about Romney — but this is exactly why I haven’t been able to trust him.”
I think that it is just Romney’s ignorance of the conservative movement in America.
He may really not know what this attack on Rush, and then this continued brush off of Rush could mean.