A foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign warned against policies that would aid “the Soviet Union” Wednesday, making him at least the third person from Team Romney — including Romney himself — to refer to a country that hasn’t existed since 1991 in the course of attacking President Obama’s foreign policy.
The Obama campaign has already accused Romney of having a “Cold War mindset” on foreign policy, so it naturally seized on a clip of longtime Republican diplomat Rich Williamson, a Romney adviser, speaking at the Brookings Institution Wednesday. Williamson was condemning the Obama approach to Syria.
He called the country “strategically important to the Soviet Union.” Watch:
It’s true that modern-day Russia is an ally of Syria — and has been accused of standing in the way of plans by the U.S. and other nations to aid the rebellion in that country — Williamson’s slip puts him in the pantheon of Romney supporters who have made similar missteps about the Soviets when attacking Obama’s foreign policy.
• In April, Romney adviser and former Navy secretary John Lehman accused Obama of not doing enough to protect America from the Soviets in the Arctic.
“We’re seeing the Soviets pushing into the Arctic with no response from us,” he said on a Romney campaign conference call. “In fact, the only response is to announce the early retirement of the last remaining icebreaker.”
• That same month, Romney caught himself just after he fired off a warning about the Soviet threat.
“Obama ‘entered into an agreement with the Soviets, excuse me, with Russia’ in the nuclear arms START treaty that effectively required the United States to reduce its weapons stockpile while allowing Russia to increase its stockpile,” Romney said on April 20.
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