Kaplan on Romney

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Yesterday I read Mitt Romney’s attack on the New-START treaty with Russia, which cuts back on both sides’ nuclear arsenals, and even though I don’t know much about this stuff I was left scratching my head. A commission can broadly amend the treaty? (Not likely.) We aren’t allowed to load ICBMs on bombers? (ICBMs don’t go on bombers, do they?) We aren’t allowed to convert ICBM silos into missile defense sites? (Do we even want to?) Etc. etc.

Well, it turns out it’s even worse than that. Fred Kaplan does know a lot about this stuff, and his epic takedown is here. There is, almost literally, not a single meaningful word in Romney’s entire piece. But I guess that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s a great bit of base pandering for the Republican Party’s 2012 primaries, and that’s pretty obviously what it’s aimed at.