{"id":35736,"date":"2019-03-01T01:13:40","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T01:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35736"},"modified":"2019-03-01T01:13:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T01:13:40","slug":"mea-culpa-mitt-was-right-about-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35736","title":{"rendered":"Mea culpa: Mitt was right about Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/150615081319-mitt-romney-super-169.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-35737\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/150615081319-mitt-romney-super-169-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/150615081319-mitt-romney-super-169-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/150615081319-mitt-romney-super-169-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/150615081319-mitt-romney-super-169-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/150615081319-mitt-romney-super-169.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s time to admit I was wrong about something back in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney &#8212; the freshman U.S. senator from Utah &#8212; declared that Russia was the nation&#8217;s No. 1 &#8220;geopolitical foe.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I was among the Americans who scoffed at Sen. Romney&#8217;s assertion. I supported President Obama&#8217;s re-election and the president was seeking to make the case that Russia didn&#8217;t pose the threat that Romney said it did.<\/p>\n<p>Obama was wrong. So was I. However, I take little comfort in knowing that millions of other Americans also were wrong.<\/p>\n<p>We now are learning the hard truth about what Romney said in 2012. Russia has cemented its role as the nation&#8217;s premier threat.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, we also have international terror organizations that pose serious and dire danger to this country. President Obama sought to tell Sen. Romney in 2012 during a presidential campaign debate that the &#8220;cold war has been over for 20 years.&#8221; While that is true, the Russia that emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union has threatened the integrity of our electoral system.<\/p>\n<p>The current president of the United States, Donald Trump, doesn&#8217;t act as if he believes it. He gives Russian strongman\/tyrant Vladimir Putin a pass on Russia&#8217;s 2016 electoral assault. He denigrates our nation&#8217;s intelligence network in the process.<\/p>\n<p>None of us who criticized Mitt Romney in 2012 should be as blas\u00e9 as Trump is about Russia. I am concerned about what Russia is capable of doing.<\/p>\n<p>Does Russia pose a direct military threat to this country? I do not believe that is the case, although they do possess a substantial nuclear arsenal developed by the USSR.<\/p>\n<p>Russia, though, is a third- or perhaps fourth-rate economic power.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Russians are capable of inflicting significant damage via their cyber capabilities. They have done so already. They will do so again.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, they pose the most serious threat to this nation.<\/p>\n<p>Mitt Romney was right.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s time to admit I was wrong about something back in 2012. Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney &#8212; the freshman U.S. senator from Utah &#8212; declared that Russia was the nation&#8217;s No. 1 &#8220;geopolitical foe.&#8221; I was among the Americans who scoffed at Sen. Romney&#8217;s assertion. I supported President Obama&#8217;s re-election and the president &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35736\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mea culpa: Mitt was right about Russia<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[61,74,540,1054,1424,3101,7467,4343,6681,5125],"class_list":["post-35736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-2012-election","tag-2016-election","tag-barack-obama","tag-cold-war","tag-donald-trump","tag-mitt-romney","tag-russian-interference","tag-soviet-union","tag-ussr","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35738,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35736\/revisions\/35738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}