Conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin:
Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives. […]
According to sources familiar with the situation, Grenell decided to resign after being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president’s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign. […]
Right Turn has learned from multiple sources that the senior officials from the Romney campaign and respected Republicans not on the campaign contacted Ric Grenell over the weekend in an attempt to persuade him not to leave the campaign. Those were unsuccessful. During the two weeks after Grenell’s hiring was announced the Romney campaign did not put Grenell out to comment on national security matters and did not use him on a press foreign policy conference call. Despite the controversy in new media and in conservative circles, there was no public statement of support for Grenell by the campaign and no supportive social conservatives were enlisted to calm the waters. Beyond his statement, Grenell has declined further comment today.
The title of this post is a little vague. If Grenell was driven off Romney’s team, then who did the driving?
The title of Rubin’s post is “Richard Grenell hounded from Romney campaign by anti-gay conservatives,” and that’s a fair enough take on it. But I think that Grenell, a longtime Republican activist, knew from the start that some prominent conservatives, from the religious right to the National Review, would oppose his appointment. Grenell was fully prepared to take some flack.
It’s more likely that what Grenell couldn’t stand was being kept in the closet (pun intended) by the Romney campaign. Romney could have put Grenell out there on the Sunday morning shows and other gabfests and let Grenell do his job: Talking right-wing foreign policy. (A job that Grenell could have done well, and certainly better than Romney himself.) Instead, Romney chose to let right-wing anti-gays intimidate his campaign. Romney, typically, was trying to have it both ways; keeping Grenell on staff as his foreign policy spokesman (demonstrating to independent voters that Romney is not anti-gay), but not actually allowing Grenell to act as a spokesman (to placate the right wing).
I think Grenell understandably found that to be an impossible situation.
I think Grenell was driven off Romney’s team not by the entirely predictable whines of the anti-gay activists, but by Romney’s cowardly refusal to let Grenell do his job.
Although this episode usefully demonstrates how intolerant the GOP is, and how much Romney will bow to the far right, I’m not happy about it. There is a significant chance that Romney will be the next president; whoever replaces Grenell will no doubt be generally as right-wing as Grenell himself, but unlike Grenell will not be openly pro-gay rights. It’s imaginable that there could be a time, in the next four to eight years, when having someone who is pro-gay in the White House could make a difference. It would be better if Grenell had remained.
I don’t agree that his retention would automatically been a good thing. If there’s an X% chance he could have influenced Romney’s decisions, and Romney’s current chance of winning Y%, then he has X*Y% chance of doing good. However, by leaving, he presumably damages Romney’s chances of being elected by Z%. Is the good done by leaving greater than that done by staying (is Z > X*Y)? That depends on the estimates for those variables.
I do not find this an admirable act by Mr. Romney.
I find it odd that this post assumes Grennell was completely unproblematic other than (from the point of view of the GOP) being gay.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/richard-grenell-rachel-maddow_b_1464302.html
Mythago – I’m not really sure what the relevance of that article to this post is, unless you are claiming that Grennell’s anti-woman/anti-lesbian tweets actually contributed towards his being pushed out of the way.
This is a post about the culture of the Republican campaign and the power that the anti-gay contingent has on it. The fact that the person their bigotry happened to force out was himself problematic was a lucky accident.
Eytan, I’m pretty sure that’s what I just said. The homophobes were able to get traction with their objections to Grennell because his obnoxious and sexist behavior pissed off anyone who might be an ally.
Mythago – I’m afraid I failed to understand that from your earlier post (which seemed to me to be a criticism of Amp’s post for failing to acknowledge Grennell’s behaviour, not an explanation of the relevance of said behaviour); thanks for clarifying. I’m not sure that I agree with your assessment, though, in that I’m not sure that the people who are pissed about Grennell’s sexism would have had the type of influence on the Romney campaign necessary for them to be effective allies. But then, I’m hardly an expert on the power structures of said campaign.
True, but I’m not sure so much that the ‘allies’ would have been pissed at Grennell’s sexism per se, so much as pissed off at him for saying sexist things in a campaign where there’s a significant gender gap. My suspicion is that gave the folks wanting Grennell out enough to tip the balance against him.
So what you’re saying is that the number of people in Romney’s campaign who want nothing to do with gays by no means dominates it or it’s agenda, but given this guy’s other behavior they added enough weight to help force this guy out. As opposed to “Everyone in Romney’s campaign is homophobic and that’s why this guy is gone.”
RonF, I’m pretty sure nobody has said “Everybody in Romney’s campaign is homophobic”. You can do better than strawmanning.
Hm. Yes, that’s true. My apologies. Let me rephrase, then.
The comments here are that while anti-gay conservatives were involved, there were other reasons for removing him and other people who were active in the effort. That title makes it seem as though it was all about his sexuality and people who oppose it.
I was under the impression that the homophobic people who drove him off were not in the campaign, but outside of it. The sexist stuff may have contributed to him not having enough allies in the campaign to stand up to the outside pressure. That’s how I’ve been reading the discussion. My takeaway from this is mostly that Romney is not able to stand up to the more extreme elements in his own party. I suspect that will have implications for how he governs, if he is elected.
I think both candidates have issues with the more extreme elements of their supporters. This is why Pres. Obama is doing this dance with redefining marriage to encompass same-sex couples (and sending his VP out to do the wink and the nod about it). What’s interesting is that – as you probably are well aware – there are a number of people on the right who support ex-Gov. Romney not because they are in agreement with all his positions but because they see him as at least better than the alternative. Obviously you can say the same about Pres. Obama. However, in the case of the right at least there is now a concerted effort to concentrate on the Senate races as a means of getting the Senate shoved to the right so as to act as a check on Romney’s leftward tendencies should Romney be elected.
As an case in point I draw your attention to Sen. Lugar’s loss in the Indiana Republican Senatorial primary. He was defeated, fairly handily I might add, by one Richard Mourdock, currently Indiana’s State Treasurer – with support by various Tea Party activists. One of the reasons for their support that I have seen put forward was that they felt that they need people in the Senate to balance Romney’s leftward tilt.
The fact that he’s currently State Treasurer is significant because that means he’s run in and won state-wide elections before. He isn’t some unknown candidate that came out of left field (hm … maybe in this case we should say “right field”). Democratic politicians are stating that is that this is a pickup opportunity for the Democrats, but I would have to see some polling data to back that up. Indiana is pretty Republican and if this guy had a bunch of whacknut opinions about creationism or whatever they probably would have come out already.
RonF @10: Yes, that was my quibble with the title. This wasn’t “perfectly decent chap forced out by bigots”. It was the right thing being done for the wrong reasons, using the right reasons as a partial pretext.