We recently did THIS POST having about how Mitt Romney’s new foreign policy spokesman Richard Grennell scrubbed his Twitter account of Tweets that were perceived as over the top, sexist or offensive. Now Grennell has resigned from the Romney campaign — but not because of his Tweets: but because he was under fire from some conservatives for being gay. This somehow made him suspected of being potentially a disloyal Republican.
I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin (who it is to be noted is a conservative blogger) has some original reporting:
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.
Pieces in two conservative publications, the National Review and Daily Caller, reflected the uproar by some social conservatives over the appointment.
In the National Review, Matthew J. Franck wrote late last week: “Suppose Barack Obama comes out — as Grenell wishes he would — in favor of same-sex marriage in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. How fast and how publicly will Richard Grenell decamp from Romney to Obama?”
The argument that Grenell could essentially not be openly gay and serve on a GOP presidential campaign was belied by the fact that Grenell has been a loyal Republican for many years, working for esteemed foreign policy figures including former Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton.
The ongoing pressure from social conservatives over his appointment and the reluctance of the Romney campaign to send Grenell out as a spokesman while controversy swirled left Grenell essentially with no job.
This ongoing narrative of the GOP will continue to be a turn off to many moderate and independent voters: the exclusionary nature of many now in the GOP.
You could argue that, oh well, the Republicans were not going to get many gay votes anyway (and they won’t). But the larger issue is that whole groups are increasingly getting the message that they’re not welcome in today’s the Republican Party.
The question is after getting all of these messages about you hell out of positions in power in the GOP members of these groups will stay home on election day or decide to cast their votes against a party that seems to suggest that if they get ahold of a lot of the reigns of power their influence will be limited.
Rubin does have an update:
The Romney camp has now responded via campaign manager Matt Rhoades: “We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons. We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”
That is a perhaps too subtle retort to those calling for Grenell’s head, that he was not hired to advise on gay issues but on foreign policy matters.
Fair enough. That makes sense as well.
But what message does Romney send people now offended by why Grennell left by not insisting he stay and do the job for which he had originally been hired?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.