America Is Special, Vote for Me

Posted on Nov 18, 2011

Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)

Mitt Romney raises his hand at CPAC in Washington, D.C., in February.

Here’s a Republican-backed method to cure all that ails the country: Close your eyes, get to your happy place, and invoke the time-honored mantra America is special until you forget you don’t have a job and various segments of the world’s population think the U.S. has acted a little sketchy lately. 

Yes, folks, it’s time we herald the return of American exceptionalism, rebooted and set to be reclaimed by some GOP operatives for Campaign 2012. It’s a return to what makes us truly great—or at least it sounds pretty good.  —KA

The New York Times:

It is easy to dismiss as election-season jingoism, the political equivalent of a “We’re No. 1” chant from the cheap seats. But the exceptionalism argument offers some voters a reassuring counternarrative to persistent joblessness, a long-term hollowing out of the middle class and a sense that the nation’s best days are past. And it intensifies the pressure on Mr. Obama to avoid sounding defensive about the difficult challenges he has faced as president and to articulate a positive story for why he deserves another four years.

“We have a president right now who thinks America’s just another nation,” Mitt Romney said last Saturday, at the most recent debate. “America is an exceptional nation. We have a president who thinks that the way to conduct foreign policy is through his personal effects on other people. I believe the way to conduct foreign policy is with American strength.”

At a Values Voter convention in October, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said that “those in the White House today” do not believe in American exceptionalism and would rather emulate Europe.

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