Analysis: Romney’s tour gaffes unlikely to cost votes

Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s diplomatic stumbles on an overseas tour – including his questioning on London’s ability to host the Olympics – are unlikely to have done much damage to his campaign to deny President Barack Obama a second term. There are at least two reasons.

First, Romney’s remarks in London and Israel will most likely be seen as positives by the candidate’s backers. Tough talk in support of Israel in particular is music to the ears of his conservative base. Second, voters are overwhelmingly concerned about their economic wellbeing and the struggling US recovery from recession, not US foreign policy.

“Since the Vietnam War, there’s just such scant evidence for foreign policy affecting elections that Romney’s performance probably won’t matter,” said Jeffrey Martinson, a political scientist at Meredith College. “In terms of political psychology, most voters don’t have a sense of how to measure or understand the nuances of foreign policy.”

By pure measures of diplomatic success, Mr Romney performed poorly on his travels to Britain, Israel and Poland.

As well as attracting rebuttal’s from David Cameron and Boris Johnson,in Israel, he said Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state, a declaration that US administrations have refused to accept given the decades-long insistence by Palestinians that the ancient city is their capital.

Beyond that, a top Romney adviser suggested that Mr Romney, if elected, would give the green light to a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

And in a speech to a gathering of mostly American Jewish donors, Mr Romney implied that Israel was more advanced than the Palestinians because of cultural superiority. That comment combined with his stated readiness to move the American embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv caused a furore among Palestinians.

“Yesterday, he destroyed negotiations by saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and today he is saying Israeli culture is more advanced than Palestinian culture,” fumed top Palestinian official Saeb Erekat on Tuesday. “Isn’t this racism?”

Mr Romney ignored the fact that Israel has actively occupied Palestinian territories, imposing severe restrictions on economic activity and the movement of the Arab population in the West Bank. Israel maintains an economic blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, after pulling forces out of the territory in 2005.

“These kinds of things leave Democrats with so much material to use against Romney that it will be hard for them to sort it all out,” said Natalie Davis, professor of political science at Birmingham-Southern College. “While Romney’s behaviour might look bad to the intelligentsia in both parties, it doesn’t really matter to the average voter. What he says has a populist foreign policy feel to it that appeals to the conservative base.”