President Obama took a very hard line against the heated Iran rhetoric permeating the GOP presidential field. He suggested that his prospective GOP opponents are irresponsible and naive when it comes to their collective eagerness to consider going to war with Iran.
“This is not a game, and there is nothing casual about it,” Obama said. “And, you know, when I see some of these folks who have a lot of bluster and a lot of big talk, but when you actually ask them specifically what they would do, it turns out they repeat the things that we’ve been doing over the last three years.”
Here’s video of the moment:
TPM asked the campaigns to respond to Obama’s remarks. Here’s what we got in response, so far:
⢠Newt Gingrich’s spokesperson, RC Hammond, said he hadn’t seen the president’s press conference (Gingrich has a full campaign day today) but referred us to Gingrich’s “red line” comment from his speech at the AIPAC conference Tuesday.
“The red line is not the morning the bomb goes off, or the morning our intelligence committee tells us they’ve failed once again,” Gingrich told the conference by satellite. “The red line is now. Because the Iranians now are deepening their fortifications …deepening their commitment to nuclear weapons, while we talk.”
A few minutes later, the Hammond offered up a tweet from Politico’s Ginger Gibson:
Newt “I want to say to the government of Iran, you want to cease to exist, come play.”
— Ginger Gibson (@GingerGibson) March 6, 2012
⢠Mitt Romney’s campaign sent over a copy of the candidate’s full remarks to the AIPAC conference Tuesday. You can read the remarks here.
⢠Rick Santorum has not yet responded to our request for comment on Obama’s remarks.
