Cross Posted at The Progressive Zionist
This in from Buzzfeed Hat tip to David Nir and his diary:
Romney's latest insult/gaffe
Romney: America Is No Kibbutz
Mitt Romney bills himself as an ardent friend of Israel running against President Barack Obama who hasn't visited the American ally since taking the oath of office, but Romney's friendship only extends so far.
At a fundraiser today in Chicago — barely a week after visiting the Holy Land — Romney took a shot at the Israeli Kibbutz movement, a product of the early socialist zionist movement and integral to the story of the founding of the State of Israel.
“It’s individuals and their entrepreneurship which have driven America," Romney said. "What America is not a collective where we all work in a Kibbutz or we all in some little entity, instead it’s individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises.”
It's incredible... the man just can't get anything right.
Aside from his insult of the British (who are putting on a great Olympics so far), and having his spokesman tell a reporter to "Kiss his Ass" during the Polish leg of his trip. Romney has been in craptacular form with his Israeli part of the trip.
Before this latest gaffe/insult... Romney had managed to insult every Arab Nation at a time when America is engaged in serious alliance building to combat the threat of Iranian hegemony in the region. He then went on to immediately engage in some pandering by (doing the same thing candidate Obama did in 2008) and talk about an undivided Jerusalem. Well, this made the Rightists and their ODS allies just about cream with joy. The only problem was that hours later Romney (in typical Etch-a-Sketch fashion) immediately REVERSED himself by saying that he was going to follow in the path of every previous American administration for the past 35 years.
Which takes us now to this. Where Romney basically says... "Good thing that we are not like those idiot Israelis who live in a crappy little country and built their society with collective work. I mean G-d forbid anyone would want to be like Israel".....
So you have a Republican Party which had speakers at CPAC who were White Supremacists, who ran a candidate (Ron Paul who got roughly 10-15% of the Republican vote) who had ties to radical Right Wingers like the Neo-Nazi site stormfront AND who also said that had he been President during WWII he would not have saved the Jews. Finally, this year have a candidate who would not speak out against the conversion of Holocaust victims to the LDS Church.
And yet Republican Jews and their Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS) Suffering friends cannot understand just why Jews are breaking hard for the President. I am not sure actually who is dumber... Mitt Romney and/or his handlers OR members of the American Jewish community who would vote for this guy.