Romney Adviser Calls Foreign Policy A ‘Distraction’

An adviser to Mitt Romney referred to foreign policy as a “distraction” in this year’s presidential election. While President Obama’s campaign continues to focus on the administration’s foreign policy successes and the lack of national security experience from the Romney ticket, Romney aide Robert O’Brien accused the Obama campaign of “going from one shiny object to the next:”

The Romney campaign, however, doesn’t think national security is a winning issue for Obama.

Romney foreign policy advisor Robert O’Brien called the Obama campaign’s tactic a transparent ploy to distract from the sagging economy, including a recent jobs report that was “a disaster for them.”

“It doesn’t surprise me that they’re raising foreign policy because it’s another distraction from the Administration’s terrible economic record,” O’Brien told BuzzFeed. “They’re going from one shiny object to the next.”

Romney has received widespread criticism — even from leading Republicans — for ignoring U.S. troops and the war in Afghanistan in his speech to the Republican National Convention.

But O’Brien’s claim that foreign policy is a distraction squares with a wider theme of Romney’s campaign. Another adviser told the New York Times back in May that “Romney doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office.” While it seems clear that the so-called “Cheney-ites” are running things behind the scenes, Romney has avoided much public discussion of foreign policy. Even his own advisers and supporters have no idea what Romney’s foreign policy is and his recent foreign trip that was supposed to be a slam dunk in beefing up his security bona fides bombed, spawning the not-so-flattering moniker “Romney Shambles.”