Romney Hooks Himself Off the Stage:
In every campaign, there's a moment you know it's all over. When John McCain chose Sarah Palin in 2008, for example. Or when Bob Dole became the GOP nominee in 1996. For Mitt Romney, there have been so many of these moments that it's hard to pinpoint which one is actually the hook or the card at the end of the movie that reads "Fin," which we know Romney would understand because he lived in a castle in France during the Vietnam War, something that would have automatically disqualified him from being a Republican nominee a couple of decades ago.

(Seriously, can you imagine how the right would spin a Democrat having gotten a deferment on the draft so he could hang out in Europe? Oh, right. It's one of the things they attacked Bill Clinton for in 1992, except, you know, he was a Rhodes scholar, not a door-knocking street preacher, and he was against the war.)

The Rude Pundit has long believed, going back to mid-2011, that not only would President Obama win this election and defeat specifically Mitt Romney, but that he would win by a big margin, not in an Ohio squeaker, not in a Florida clusterfuck, but by as much of a margin as he did in 2008, perhaps more. And that's for several reasons, the primary one being that, no matter what he tries to do, Mitt Romney is just an absolute dickhead. And by picking Paul Ryan, he actually fucked the GOP in way worse ways than simply being the nominee. Now, more people give a shit about what's in the Ryan budget. Most used to hear the phrase "Ryan budget" and believe the right-wing hype about it. By putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney pulled back the curtain to reveal that the wizard is just another bumbling man.

Today, this post was going to be about how Romney is trying to run on the innate goodness of himself, that, perhaps one last time, he could win because he's a competent white man, and shouldn't that be who leads us? Yes, this was going to be about the emptiness of the Romney campaign, the failure to offer even one goddamn example of a tax loophole that might be closed, the way that Romney and Ryan have to tell outright lies to even get anyone to pay attention to them, and more.

But then U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya were attacked, with the ambassador to Libya and staff members murdered (yes, murdered, and their killers should be treated as murderers, not elevated to warriors, as some on the right wish to do), and Romney demonstrated vividly and for all to see why he not only shouldn't be president, but why he has no business in politics. First, his campaign issued a statement that, as many have reported, read as if the unvetted, ass-saving statement by a frightened U.S. embassy in Egypt, just before it was attacked, was the gospel of the Obama administration, fucking up not only the source of the statement, but also the fact that no one had been killed when the Cairo statement was issued. Said the Romney campaign, "It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." In other words, another fucking lie.

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a clear statement last night that condemned the attacks outright, saying, more or less, everyone needs to stop being such fucktards when their invisible sky wizard might be offended. That was followed this morning by an even more impassioned spoken statement by Clinton, which was followed by another statement mourning the deaths and condemning the violence by President Obama.

Wedged in-between those statements was a press conference called by Mitt Romney, and that, dear readers, was the end of the Romney campaign.

No, he didn't have to stand by the President. That would have been ludicrous. But Romney offered nothing that he hasn't already said repeatedly on the campaign trail: "An apology for America’s values is never the right course." Romney repeatedly condemned the statement of the embassy, even though, as Romney himself noted, "The embassy in Cairo put out a statement after their grounds had been breached. Protesters were inside the grounds. They reiterated that statement after the breach."

So let's get this straight: Mitt Romney believes that at that moment, with their lives perhaps on the line, the U.S. embassy employees still in the building should have said something that pissed off  the protesters further. He said, "I think it’s a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values, that instead when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation." The man really could have used a factchecker or two.

But forget that for a moment and look at this exchange:
Reporter: If you had known, if the Ambassador had died, would you have issued such a strongly said statement.

Romney: I’m not going to take hypotheticals about what would’ve been known, what and so forth.

At that moment, Romney could have repeated his condolences to the family of Ambassador Chris Stevens. He could have looked like he gave a flying fuck about it. He didn't even have to say he jumped the gun. A little bit of humanity goes a long way. But he looked like another corporate douchebag who thinks he's right just because he's who he is, not wanting to be bothered with the feelings of the employees he's firing, smirking and acting like the meanest bitch in the poodle kennel.

It's over. It's over because now that foreign policy is back in the mix, Mitt Romney cannot out-tough the man who kills Islamic terrorists with drones every week. Shit, a real candidate would run against that fact, but he's not. And Romney seems to have forgotten that he's not running against Senator Obama, who, by the way, still had more elected experience than Romney. He's running against the guy who took out bin Laden and helped take down Gaddafi. (By the way, the Libyan government, showing extraordinary class and balls, condemned the attacks.)

Now remind us all: what's Romney's foreign policy credentials? Cayman Island shell corporations? The fucking Olympics?