Romney says he was right about Russia in 2012 and mocks Obama putdown: ‘The 80s called and we didn’t answer’

Former Republican presidential nominee said in 2012 that Russia was ‘our number one geopolitical foe’

Former 2012 Republican presidential nominee and Utah Sen Mitt Romney had a simple message as Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine: I was right and Democrats were wrong.

In 2012, Mr Romney, who was running against President Barack Obama, criticised his Democratic opponent for being caught on a hot mic telling then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that after the 2012 election, he would have more “flexibility” to negotiate on missile defence.

“This is to Russia, this is without question, our number one geopolitical foe,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at the time. “They fight every cause for the world’s worst actors.”

In the final general election debate between the two, Mr Obama mocked Mr Romney, whose most recent office at the time was being governor of Massachusetts.

“And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” he quipped. “The Cold War’s been over for 20 years. But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the social policies of the 1920s.”

After losing the 2012 presidential race, Mr Romney emerged as the Republican Party’s most prominent critic of Donald Trump in 2016. But after an unsuccessful courtship to potentially be Mr Trump’s secretary of state, Mr Romney ran for Senate in his adopted home state of Utah and won in 2018.

On Wednesday evening, Mr Romney released a statement criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He aslo criticised the Obama administration’s attempts to “reset” relations with Russia after Russia’s invasion of Georgia – as well as Mr Trump’s policy of “America First”.

“Putin’s impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided ‘reset’ and the short-sightedness of ‘America First’,” he said before calling back to Mr Obama’s line. “The ‘80s called’ and we didn’t answer.”

Kevin Sheridan, who served as Paul Ryan’s communications director when Mr Ryan was Mr Romney’s running mate, said the Obama campaign was not the only Democratic entity that criticised Mr Romney.

“It was obvious 10 years ago Putin was a menace. Republicans will argue that China is a far bigger problem now but they are not unrelated,” Mr Sheridan told The Independent in an email. “Projecting weakness in the face of Russian aggression is only going to encourage China.”

Similar, Mr Sheridan said then-Senator John Kerry said in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that year that Mr Romney got his foreign policy from Rocky IV, wherein fictional character Rocky Balboa fights a Russian boxer. Mr Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, would later become Mr Obama’s Secretary of State and now serves as President Joe Biden’s special envoy for Climate.

“Two years later Russian forces took off their uniforms, invaded Crimea, and shot down a passenger jet killing 298 civilians,” he said.