Hey, remember that time Barack Obama told the Russians that he'd "have more flexibility" after he secured his second term? Election Day was still eight months away, ObamaCare was almost as unpopular as it is now, and we could still look forward to Obama's disastrous first debate. Good times.
You may recall that Mitt Romney pounced on Obama's open-mic gaffe by reminding CNN that Russia was not exactly the close American ally that President Obama liked to think they were.
"He's planning on doing more and suggests to Russia that he has things that he's willing to do with them that he's not willing to tell the American people. This is to Russia. This is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They fight every cause for the world's worst actors."
Chris Mathews and his MSNBC cronies were stunned that Romney would say such a thing. How could a man - living in this decade - possibly be so stupid!? This isn't the '80s! Romney isn't Reagan! Didn't he know that the cold war is over!?
Maybe Mitt was just "trying too hard."
As Cynthia Tucker pointed out, "This is Mitt Romney's severely conservative problem. He struggles so hard to be persuasive - to make a case against Obama - that he always ends up jumping the shark. Saying something that is completely off-key and not credible!"
Matthews made sure you knew that Romney was a moron - someone who was still living squarely in the outdated mentality of the 1950's red scare. The modern Russia is a kinder, gentler, nation that is deeply vested in maintaining its lofty, enlightened, position on the world stage. It's a reformed Russia for the new millennia, and how dare a dangerous crackpot like Mitt Romney suggest otherwise?
As The Huffington Post's Sam Stein put it, "The fact that he declared Russia the preeminent geo political problem that the United States faces in the world IS an antiquated worldview - but it's not something that's been hidden from Romney's policy platform."
Why, voting for an antiquated throwback like Romney would likely lead Eastern Europe to the brink of war! It's much better to put a man in the Oval Office who knows when to appease show "flexibility" right?
The world should never let Chris Matthews live this down.
