First since '52: No talk of war in GOP speech
BY Associated Press
Saturday, September 01, 2012
9/01/12 at 6:22 AM
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WASHINGTON (AP) - With America embroiled in its longest armed conflict, Mitt Romney became the first Republican since 1952 to accept his party's nomination without mentioning war.
Three election cycles after the 2001 terrorist attacks, neither Romney nor his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, had anything to say about terrorism or war while on their party's biggest stage. The only one who did Thursday was actor Clint Eastwood, who won cheers for suggesting invading Afghanistan was a mistake and calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops - a line that might have earned boos four years ago.
The Romney strategy reflects the weak public support for the Afghanistan war, fatigue over a decade of terrorism fears and the central role of the economy in the campaign. But it was still a remarkable shift in tone.
Candidates Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon criticized the handling of the Vietnam War. Bob Dole said the way to prevent conflict is to prepare for greater wars than a country will need to fight. Ronald Reagan warned that a weak nation would tempt the Soviet Union.
Even President Gerald Ford, in 1976, a year after the last U.S. troops left Vietnam, declared that "a strong military posture is always the best insurance for peace."
Things are different now, 11 years after President George W. Bush pledged to "starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or rest."
Osama bin Laden is dead. The Iraq war is over. Al-Qaida is weakened. The color-coded alerts that for years warned of a constant, unseen danger have faded away. None of the presidential or vice presidential candidates for either party has served in the military, a first in 80 years.
And although 79,000 troops remain in Afghanistan, public support has eroded for the decade-long campaign there. An AP-GfK poll found in May that 66 percent of voters believe the country should not be involved in Afghanistan anymore. That same poll found that only 37 percent of Republicans backed the war.
Republican strategist Tony Fratto said was it odd to hear a major Republican speech with no mention of the issue that has so dominated the past decade. Fratto served as a White House spokesman and aide to the younger Bush, whose presidency was consumed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But with 8.3 percent unemployment, Republicans see the economy as the driving issue this year. And Fratto said Romney's primary goal Thursday night was to connect with voters on a personal level and redraw the caricature of him as wooden and out of touch.
"If you're going to leave some things out, you're going to leave out things that aren't highest on the list of concerns of voters," Fratto said.
Conservative commentator William Kristol, a Republican standard-bearer, criticized Romney's decision.
"Leave aside the question of the political wisdom of Romney's silence, and the opportunities it opens up for President Obama next week," Kristol noted on his blog. "What about the civic propriety of a presidential nominee failing even to mention, in his acceptance speech, a war we're fighting and our young men and women who are fighting it?"
Original Print Headline: No mention of war in Romney's acceptance
