The Wall Street Journal editorial board defended Mitt Romney against the “pundit class” who condemned the Republican nominee’s response to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and consulate in Libya Tuesday. While many commentators and politicians on both sides of the aisle felt Romney’s statement, which attacked President Obama’s response to the crisis, showed bad judgment, the Wall Street Journal editors disagreed.
The Journal acknowledges that Mitt Romney’s initial statement is flawed because it cites a statement from the U.S. embassy in Cairo from before the protests began as a “first response” to the protests. But the editors didn’t see this is as a big deal.
Whatever the timing of the Cairo Embassy’s statements, Mr. Romney is right that a U.S. Embassy ought to ignore YouTube videos produced by obscure cranks. As Tuesday’s events showed, pandering to Islamists who would use the video to inflame anti-American sentiment isn’t going to stop the protests…
His political faux pax was to offend a pundit class that wants to cede the foreign policy debate to Mr. Obama without thinking seriously about the trouble for America that is building in the world.
