American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer poked fun at Mitt Romney today on Focal Point following the resignation of Richard Grenell, an openly gay Romney spokesman on security issues who Fischer and other Religious Right leaders wanted ousted from the campaign. Anti-gay activists celebrated news of Grenell’s resignation as a “huge win,” and the New York Times reported that one Republican adviser claimed the campaign offered no defense of Grenell because “they didn’t want to confront the religious right.”
Today, Fischer asserted that Romney shouldn’t expect voters to trust him to confront China, Russia or North Korea if he cannot stand up to “a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America.” “I don’t think for one minute that Mitt Romney did not want this guy gone,” Fischer continued, “he wanted this guy gone because there was not one word of defense, not a peep, from the Romney camp to defend him.”
Fischer: Let me ask you this question, people have raised this question, if Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, coopted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me? I don’t think Romney is realizing the doubts that this begins to raise about his leadership. I don’t think for one minute that Mitt Romney did not want this guy gone; he wanted this guy gone because there was not one word of defense, not a peep, from the Romney camp to defend him. They just went absolutely stone cold silent, they put a bag over Grenell’s head, they even asked him to organize this phone conference and they didn’t even let him speak at the conference that he organized.
