Is Mitt Romney's Europe-bashing well placed?

Mitt Romney called the Obama White House a reflection of the 'worst of what Europe has become' in his victory speech last night. But the austerity favored by the GOP is much in vogue in Europe.

|
Elise Amendola/AP
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney waves to supporters at a New Hampshire primary night rally at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, N.H., Tuesday. Behind Romney are his sons Tagg and Craig and his wife Ann. Romney called the Obama White House a reflection of the 'worst of what Europe has become' in his victory speech last night.

To hear Mitt Romney’s victory speech in New Hampshire one might think he is running as much against Europe – or some American perception of it – as against President Obama.

In three withering references at the end of a fiery 10-minute speech last night, the GOP front-runner depicted “Europe” as weak, socialist, an object of pity and, compared with the shining American model, lacking inspiration.

“I want you to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are, not the worst of what Europe has become,” the potential next president said of his possible chief world ally.

President Obama, said Romney, “takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and towns across America for our inspiration.” Mr. Obama wants to “turn America into a European-style social welfare state. We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.”

Poor Europe! Whatever happened to China-bashing?

To be sure, Romney’s speech in Manchester seemed aimed as much at the conservative voters of South Carolina, site of the next US primary, as to voters in New Hampshire, who gave him a clear victory. A third straight win might be a knockout blow for Romney and turn the current vitriolic GOP in-fighting into a search for Romney’s vice-presidential nominee.

So “Europe,” not New York City, may become a cultural punching bag in the southern strategy of the former governor of Massachusetts. Never mind that Romney spent two years as a Mormon missionary in France, speaks fluent French, and played the cosmopolitan host at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake. He won’t need to reveal his inner Bubba on the sweet potato circuit, or explain why his Massachusetts health care reforms took on a European character, if he runs against stereotypes of the old world in old Dixie.

Here in cheese-eating Europe, among the slouching Marxist masses that throng idle cafes and welfare centers, the US presidential election has barely made a dent. Kidding aside, it is mostly European editorial writers who have followed the US race. Romney may be politically safe in bashing Europe since the continent historically favors Democrats. John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are loved. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the recent George Bush, not as much. America may have forgotten Iraq; Europe hasn't.

Here Romney, among those paying attention, is seen as the best of a dubious bunch. Romney’s comments this fall that God chose America to lead the world caused a small stir. But he is generally depicted as a moderate fighting off a troglodyte GOP that has shifted far to the right since the Tea Party stormed into Congress in 2010, and in last summer’s debt-ceiling debate nearly brought America’s government to a halt. That caught Europe's attention.

Romney is the “pragmatist business-oriented” candidate (Germany’s Die Welt) up against archconservative Christian evangelicals and others representing an “ultra-right drift” among Republicans (France’s Le Monde).

Last night’s Europe bashing by Romney “resurrected the simplistic neoconservative talking points…popularized by Robert Kagan, who said Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus,” comments Karim Emile Bitar, a researcher at France's Institute for International and Strategic Relations. “This cartoonish vision seems all the more startling in a changing world where both Europe and the US are confronted with the rise of emerging powers."

Moreover, in lifting the hood on Romney’s Europe stereotypes, there are some factual problems, or what Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn called “stretchers.”

Romney may paint Obama, America’s first black president, as somehow European and thus foreign or less American. But if anything, the feeling in Europe is that the US head of state has largely ignored them, turning his gaze toward the Pacific and Asia when he is not removing troops from the wars of his predecessor.

If Europe is in decline, moreover, its leadership and political drift are moving to the right. In European terms, Britain’s David Cameron, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy are Republicans, not leftists.

Romney’s stump speech recites the line, "I don't think Europe is working in Europe. I know it won't work here." But Obama’s Keynesian economics and the US use of the Federal Reserve are directly at odds with Chancellor Merkel on the world stage. Europe’s austerity and budget-cutting approach to the economic crisis is far closer to GOP ideas, including Romney’s, than to Obama’s.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Is Mitt Romney's Europe-bashing well placed?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2012/0111/Is-Mitt-Romney-s-Europe-bashing-well-placed
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe