GOP Anti-Gay Faction Celebrates Running Ric Grenell Out of Romney's Campaign

UPDATE BELOW:  Keeping Grenell muzzled!

Listen to this guy, Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis at the American Family Association,
celebrate running Romney's foreign policy advisor out of town because he is gay. These are the people Romney will be beholden to and, apparently, the people who will dictate to him who is acceptable for cabinet positions and who isn't, should he become president.

And make no mistake, NO GAY CITIZEN, NO MATTER HOW QUALIFIED, NEED APPLY!

Ric Grenell was hounded out of his position as Romney's foreign policy advisor by the Christianist gay haters, and they're celebrating it with a victory dance.

Imagine what their influence would be if Romney made it to the White House! I don't understand how any member of the LGBT community would want to be part of the GOP--a political party that reviles them--after listening to this hideously bigoted man:











I call Romney spineless.  He can't stand up to this loud-mouthed bigot, how will he deal with America's enemies?  Coward!



From the Washington Post:

"Fischer was central to that “hyper-partisan discussion.” He’s the director of issue analysis at the American Family Association, and he blasted the campaign upon Grenell’s hiring for associating itself with an openly gay man.

Grenell also ran into trouble for a bunch of sexist tweets that he ended up deleting from his Twitter feed. In an interview this afternoon, I pointed out to Fischer that Grenell had deep experience in foreign-affairs flacking, a tour of duty that included working under four U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations. Would Fischer worry that, with Grenell’s resignation, the Romney campaign might have trouble finding someone as qualified? Someone with Grenell’s record as a bulldog vis-a-vis aggressive reporters? Someone who could bash the Obama team in the media? “Absolutely not,” responded Fischer. “I refuse to believe that Richard Grenell was the only qualified individual. I think that hire was about homosexuality, so there will be plenty of qualified candidates [Romney] will be able to choose from.” Straight ones, that is."

"STRAIGHT ONES, THAT IS."

There you go, America.

No gay person, no matter how qualified will be welcome if these bigots have any say in the matter.  And apparently they decide whom Romeny will have as advisors, NOT Romney!  Wow!

What a miserably distopian country these people want us to live in.

UPDATE:

"Sources close to Grenell say that he was specifically told by those high up in the Romney campaign to stay silent on the call, even while he was on it. And this was not the only time he had been instructed to shut up. Their response to the far right fooferaw was simply to go silent, to keep Grenell off-stage and mute, and to wait till the storm passed. But the storm was not likely to pass if no one in the Romney camp was prepared to back Grenell up. Hence his dilemma. The obvious solution was simply to get Grenell out there doling out the neocon red meat - which would have immediately changed the subject and helped dispel base skepticism. Instead the terrified Romneyites shut him up without any actual plan for when he might subsequently be able to do his job. To my mind, it's a mark of his integrity that he decided to quit rather than be put in this absurd situation. And it's a mark of Romney's fundamental weakness within his own party that he could not back his spokesman against the Bryan Fischers and Matthew Francks. "


Charlie Pierce writing in Esquire:

It's remarkable, this shitcanning of Richard Grenell as foreign-policy spokescritter for the Romneybot 2.0. Remarkable still for its being handled with such notable dispatch. First, you hire on the former mouthpiece for authoritarian nutbag John Bolton to establish further your neo-conservative foreign-policy gravitas. It turns out the guy is openly gay, so bonus! (Remember, all you wavering and otherwise vacant "independent" voters: Once, I was going to be a gayer senator than Teddy Kennedy. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.) Then, of course, the guy turns out to be just as crackers as his former boss — Bad-mouthing the lovely Callista Gingrich? Calumnizing kindly Doc Maddow? My seconds will call on yours, sir! — and, because he's gay, the megachurches scramble the flying monkeys into the air and, within two weeks, Grenell is as fired as an Ampad worker. Quoth the Politico:


"This was an unforced error, and one that could have been avoided if the Romney campaign had simply said early on we have 100 percent faith in Ric Grenell to do his job," said Chris Barron, one of the co-founders of the group GOProud. "Does anyone in the world doubt that if had been an evangelical or a Mormon or a Jewish person that the Romney campaign would not have defended that person? It is hard for me to comprehend why the Romney campaign chose to leave Ric Grenell hanging out there the way that they did." He added, "Every campaign when you're at this moment where you're making the transition from the primary to the general election looks for their Sistah Souljah moment. And this could have been Romney's Sistah Souljah moment. He could have said, look, this is a guy who was spokesman at the United Nations. This is a guy who served under John Bolton ... and by God, I'm not going to let a handful of extremists bring him down."


Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/richard-grenell-fired-8534269#ixzz1tlMiykZa

This is a shameful example of Mitt Romney's weak-kneed response to outside pressures.  He doesn't have the integrity nor the courage to stand his ground.  He allowed a barking-mad group of homophobic cretins to overrule his choice of a foreign policy wonk. 

Would Romney have allowed an outside group to pressure him to get rid of a Jewish person?  A Mormon? An African-American?  A Latino?  Why is it acceptable for the Christianist bigots to single out a gay person as not acceptable?  Why?

And why didn't Romney have the character to stand up to the bigoted bullies and say NO!  This is the guy I want, and his sexual orientation is not an issue. 

Romney failed.  Big time.