There's been much talk about the resignation of Mittens' foreign policy spokesman, Ric Grenell. Or maybe it just seems that way to me because I read a lot of Andrew Sullivan and he's spent the last day or so pummeling this thing as thoroughly as any non-Sarah Palin issue in recent memory. The reason for the brouhaha (a word that I will continue to try to revive the usage of) is that Grenell was, by all accounts, forced out of the campaign. Not because he wasn't of the proper ideological bent--he was a fiery eyed-neocon, and probably had the dodgy CT scans to prove it--or because he was inexperienced--he's been 'round since the mid-90s. Those reasons would make too much sense. The real problem was, he's openly gay.
Liberal readers are feigning shock right now. As did I. But many others--including even Sullivan--often need to be re-reminded just how far gone the modern GOP is. Liberals understand that implicitly; it's the reason many of us are here to begin with. The alliance Republicans made with the religious right all those decades ago sealed it; and you don't shrug off a group that large and that devoted without painful consequences. Especially not when you're a guy like Romney, who doesn't have the chops as far as many of them are concerned. When you're as suspect as he is, you have to tread carefully and the path you have to tread is further to the right than it would be for a genuine far right-winger, who'd be allowed a certain degree of impurity on occasion--already a trusted member of the club, and all that.
I don't know Romney's position on Grenell. Or gay rights. Or anything, really, except wanting to be president. But I do know that this counts as a bizarre capitulation over a very small thing. A bolder man could've withstood the brief firestorm from the extreme flank of his party, a firestorm that was sure to pass as the general drew nearer. He could've pointed out that Grenell was exactly what Republicans want in the field of foreign policy thought right now. He could've retained his anti-gay rights position to please the base and mention (rightly) that Grenell's position as foreign policy spokesman didn't matter--clearly Grenell didn't care about that until recently. He could've even survived the resignation handily, if he hadn't already borne the flip-flopper stain (he said in 1994 that he'd be more pro-gay rights than Ted Kennedy). But Mittens could not do these things.
How would such a man govern, you think? With a Congress that will not be any less conservative after November, regardless who wins the White House, and a base that will bay for blood and will not stop because they will have a president who will give them all they demand. And how, as others have pointed out, can you huffily say that you'd have stood up to bin Laden*--or anything else--when the homophobes of your own party just beat you down?
*A statement Grennell could make for you... oh, right.
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Afterword: I'm reading some things saying that Grennell's leaving might've had more to do with the long trail of angry, bile-ridden tweets and blog posts he's left (and had tried to excise). Possibly. But even if this is the case, it's still demonstrative of a poorly run campaign not vetting well enough in a post-Palin environment. And then preferring to spin the version that makes it look like it backed down from the far right of the party. That's much better, right?
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