By DONNA CASSATA, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney is a Republican standard-bearer largely standing alone in his rush to criticize President Barack Obama after violent attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya.
Romney's quick swing at Obama — as the crisis was unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa — was glaringly at odds with the more statesmanlike responses Wednesday from GOP leaders in Congress to the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others Americans in Benghazi and to the U.S. Embassy breach in Cairo.
The old notion that politics stops at the water's edge still resonates in some quarters in Washington, if not in the presidential campaign.
"U.S. leaders should unite in redoubling our efforts in the Maghreb and Middle East, practicing the kind of stout diplomacy exemplified by Ambassador Stevens," said Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., who mourned not only a diplomat but his former aide on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Hours earlier, the Romney campaign had seized on a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo condemning anti-Muslim religious incitement, casting the call for tolerance as another Obama apology for America even though it came before the protests turned violent. A defiant Romney later upped the charge against the Obama administration.
"They clearly sent mixed messages to the world. The statement that came from the administration — and the embassy is the administration — the statement that came from the administration was a statement which is akin to apology, and, I think, was a severe miscalculation," Romney told reporters Wednesday morning.
Obama not only hit back, he focused on the starkly different responses from Romney and other Republicans to press his campaign argument that the former Massachusetts governor is untested and will return the nation to a foreign policy of "blustering and blundering that cost America dearly."
"Gov. Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later," Obama said in an interview with CBS News.
The president added: "I think if you look at how most Republicans have reacted, most elected officials, they reacted responsibly. Waiting to find out the facts before they talked, making sure that our No. 1 priority is the safety, the security of American personnel. It appears that Gov. Romney didn't have his facts right."
The Romney response reflects a political reality. Roughly eight weeks to the election, Romney is under pressure from some conservatives to provide a more detailed vision of what his Republican presidency would look like, with more specifics on tax cuts and spending. Simply making the race a referendum on Obama and the slow-moving economy isn't sufficient, conservatives complain.
Romney's foreign policy broadside also comes as polls show the president opening an ever-so-slight lead in what has been a deadlocked race overall. The Republican has been on the defensive over his failure to mention U.S. troops overseas in his convention speech, which gave the Obama campaign an opening that it exploited at the Democrats' national gathering.
Romney advisers saw a need to show a candidate forceful on foreign policy, responding swiftly and decisively as voters consider who should be the next commander in chief.
National security has been one of the few issues where Obama gets high marks from Americans after the killing of Osama bin Laden and successes against al-Qaida, but the administration has struggled with the downside of the Arab Spring. In a further complication this week, the White House scrambled to quell talk of a deep rift with Israel over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's calls for Washington to spell out what would provoke a U.S.-led military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Sensing an opening, Romney aides saw the statement from Cairo and various tweets from the U.S. Embassy and figured they had an opportunity to criticize Obama while ensuring Romney made it into news stories, according to a Republican official advising Romney's campaign. Aides later recognized that Romney should have waited longer to get the details before reacting, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering Romney's campaign.
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