Jimmy Carter: Comfortable with a President Romney

Ed posts the video at Hot Air, and posits two possible explanations: That Romney is sufficiently liberal that even a hard liberal like Carter would be fine with him, or that Romney’s competence is so self-evident that Carter believes he would make a good president regardless of ideology. There is a third: Carter has gone senile and has less control of his mouth than Biden has of his. I wouldn’t rule that third possibility out.

Whatever the reason, Carter’s comment just made Obama’s task a little bit harder. The arugula-hunting multimillionaire Obama is painting Mitt Romney as the rich white guy who is out of touch and too far to the right. Romney can quote Carter, a former Democratic president, in rebuttal.

Carter also makes a point that our politics has gotten more extreme over the years. It’s true that LBJ accused Barry Goldwater of being a walking talking nuclear threat, and it’s true that Carter accused Reagan of being a walking talking nuclear threat. Both of those old accusations were, in retrospect, extreme. Reagan served two terms and we’re still here. But Carter may be right that extremism in our politics is on the rise. For the first time in American history, we do have a sitting American administration siding with, on the one hand, a hate figure with blood on his hands, siding with a movement that offers a bounty on a citizen’s head, and on the third hand, siding with a movement that espouses vigilante murder.

So Jimmy may have a point.