Mitchell played a clip of the always cartoonish Newt Gingrich and then noted that conservatives are drawing the analogy to John Kennedy’s famous meeting with Nikita Krushchev in which the latter sized Kennedy up as a lightweight and — so the argument goes — thus believed he could push Kennedy around during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Now, Kruschev? Really? I’m not sure I can imagine a better illustration of the sort of parodic paranoia I’m talking about. We do realize that the US has the most powerful military in the world and Venezuela has little ability to project military power beyond its own borders. It’s a non-entity militarily, even compared to Iran and North Korea.
To me the relevant data point is the effectiveness Gingrich as hatchet man, more then the effectiveness of the Venezuelan military as a threat to the United States. Obviously Chavez isn’t much of a threat, but Gingrich doesn’t care he’s trying influence public opinion and hurt Obama. But this scare people about non-existent threats Obama won’t be man enough handle routine is about as failed a tactic as you can get.
Check out once influential and way more credible then Newt Gingrich Michael O’Hanlon at the end of the clip, didn’t he spend the entire primary season questioning Obama’s ability to handle foreign policy threats.
How’d that work out for him and Obama?
It’s like there is just no ability to restrain their criticism to potentially useful lines of attack.
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