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Merged Gay Romney aide forced out

BenBurch

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BenBurch
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...criticism-gay-romney-aide-resigns?ft=1&f=1001

The GOP is again showing the world how tolerant they are;

Richard Grenell, a long time Republican hired by Mitt Romney's campaign as a foreign policy spokesman, resigned today. Grenell's hiring made news less than two weeks ago, because Grenell is openly gay.

The New York Times reports Grenell's abrupt resignation comes after he came "under attack by antigay activists in the party."

The Romney campaign cofirmed <sic> his resignation saying they were "disappointed" Grenell had resigned for "personal reasons."

<SNIP>
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Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association shared his disappointment with the Grenell pick on Twitter: “Romney picks out & loud gay as a spokesman. If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead.”
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here

Hiring gay people means you hate families.

ETA: Just allowing a gay man to call himself a republican is the RNC telling the pro-family community to drop dead.
 
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i read this a few minutes ago, but it looks like the story was pulled after a bunch of comments were posted comparing Grenell to jewish guards in nazi concentration camps

lovely bunch of people you got over there on the left
 
I "like" this quote:

In the National Review, Matthew J. Franck wrote late last week: “Suppose Barack Obama comes out — as Grenell wishes he would — in favor of same-sex marriage in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. How fast and how publicly will Richard Grenell decamp from Romney to Obama?”
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Because we all know gay people can't be trusted. :rolleyes:
 
defaultdotxbe said:
i read this a few minutes ago, but it looks like the story was pulled after a bunch of comments were posted comparing Grenell to jewish guards in nazi concentration camps

lovely bunch of people you got over there on the left
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Tu quoque much?

And so much of a miss, too! You find a few jerks posting comments and suddenly its the whole "left" but somehow it's OK that a presidential candidate (or the people he is beholding to in his party and who apparently are calling the shots, your choice) discriminates against gay people.
 
defaultdotxbe said:
i read this a few minutes ago, but it looks like the story was pulled after a bunch of comments were posted comparing Grenell to jewish guards in nazi concentration camps

lovely bunch of people you got over there on the left
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Did you consider that maybe the commenters were actually far far right and were giving Grenell a compliment?


:rolleyes:
 
There were a number of other issues, but I dan't say how large they were.

Romney's response didn't address the issue at all, and the LCR was just as impotent as usual:

“Ric made the choice that he feels is best for the Romney campaign, and I respect his decision,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director. “It is unfortunate that while the Romney campaign made it clear that Grenell being an openly gay man was a non-issue for the governor and his team, the hyper-partisan discussion of issues unrelated to Ric's national security qualifications threatened to compromise his effectiveness on the campaign trail. As a Bush Administration colleague of Ric, I can attest to his experience and qualifications in the national security portfolio. Ric was essentially hounded by the far right and far left. The Romney campaign has lost a well-known advocate of conservative ideas and a talented spokesman, and I am certain he will remain an active voice for a confident U.S. foreign policy.”

The Romney camp has responded via campaign manager Matt Rhoades: “We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons. We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”
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Linky.

Yes, he was "hounded by the far right and far left". One would be foolish to think that a pro-gay Republican organisation would take particular umbrage to the gay bashing from their own party.
 
It also shows Mitt Romney's political cowardice. Not that I expected any better from him, but his pandering to bigots is disgusting.
 
BenBurch said:
And fortunately he missed a golden opportunity to gain broader support.
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Actually, no. Whatever "broader" support he would have gained (and it wouldn't be much, because most moderates would just take it as another example of his hypocrisy) it would have been offset by the gay-hater vote, a significant part of the Republican base, who would drop him like a hot potato if he had allowed Grennell to stay.
ravdin said:
It also shows Mitt Romney's political cowardice. Not that I expected any better from him, but his pandering to bigots is disgusting.
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I can't really blame him. He has to play to his base. The (political) mistake was in hiring him in the first place.
 
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Wait, you're saying that Romney doesn't have the courage of his convictions? The man is a model of consistency!

All kidding aside, this sucks. I think the guy is a raving wingnut, but being forced out because of his sexual orientation is stupid. And there are a small, but growing handful of scalps from the Obama administration who have been collected as well because of manufactured outrages. It's a bad trend.

But come to think of it, both Obama's people and Grenell were forced out by the loony right, so they could go drink a beer together and commiserate.
 
By the way, it should be noted that Grenell is a John Bolton retread. Mitt Romney, Mr. Etch-A-Sketch, is getting his foreign policy advice from the John Bolton wing of the GOP. Just food for thought for those who think that Romney would somehow govern as a moderate. He's busy surrounding himself with far right advisors and advocating far right policies. I think people are deluding themselves if they think a guy who hires this kind of Neocon isn't going to govern just like George Bush did.
 
ravdin said:
It also shows Mitt Romney's political cowardice. Not that I expected any better from him, but his pandering to bigots is disgusting.
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You assume that Romney forced him out? Why? I tend to think that Grenell didn't want to become the story. The linked article at NPR notes this official statement from the campaign:

"We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill," Romney's campaign manager Matt Rhoades said in a statement.
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That does not sound to me like a statement intended as a sop to the people who wanted him out. Sounds more like they're annoyed at the soc-cons (as I am).
 
It would suck to be a gay republican. I get that there is strong religious opposition but there seems so little backbone from the leaders to stand by gay and lesbian Republicans. And let's be clear, there are a lot of gay and lesbian Republicans. There really are. Being gay doesn't change ones principles. I have a number of friends who are gay and Republican. I think it is tragic that the party has largely turned their backs on them for superstition and an ancient book of fairy tales.

People like Ted Olson give me some reason for hope.
 
Brainster said:
You assume that Romney forced him out? Why? I tend to think that Grenell didn't want to become the story. The linked article at NPR notes this official statement from the campaign:
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Not me. I don't assume that for a second. I actually think Romney is a moderate who is forced to kowtow to the far right in order to have any chance at winning the election. I strongly suspect that it was one of his handlers who whispered into his ear, "Ix-nay on the Eers-Quay". And of course, Grenell understood. You can't work that closely with the far right without developing a sense of when to scuttle the jetsam.
 
Mitt Romney's Sexist Spokesman is Forced to Resign Because He's Gay

Mitt Romney’s Sexist Spokesman Is Forced to Resign Because He’s Gay
Last week, we introduced you to Richard Grenell, the man who had just been hired as Mitt Romney's national security and foreign policy spokesman. We also introduced you to a variety of mean and often sexist tweets that Grenell had gone in and deleted from his Twitter account because they made him look like a total asshat. Well, the good news is that he abruptly resigned from his job today, so we won't have to contend with his sexist remarks and general incompetence.

The bad news, however, is that the reason Grenell stepped down is because he was under heavy attack from anti-gay GOP groups who had it out for him because he is openly gay. Not cool. Not cool, at all. Apparently his boss, Mitt Romney, responded to the nasty attacks on Grenell by essentially hiding him from public view. What a brave and courageous leader that Mittens is! This decision was understandably frustrating to Grenell, whose entire job was to be a public voice for the campaign. So, he said whatever the Republican equivalent of "peace out" is and decamped for less controversial (and probably more profitable) pastures.
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http://jezebel.com/5906841/mitt-romneys-sexist-spokesman-is-forced-to-resign-because-hes-gay
 
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