Sarah Palin on hot mic: Obama will 'weaken' U.S.

From the Politico: Sarah Palin on hot mic: Obama will 'weaken' U.S.
Sarah Palin is warning that President Barack Obama is out to “weaken” the United States if he’s reelected in November, as she sounded off on her Facebook page Monday about a hot mic moment between the Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that quickly went viral.

“Whoever chooses to merely dismiss the significance of today’s exchange between our President and Russia’s President should have their intelligence and patriotism questioned,” the former Alaska governor wrote. “Let this exchange be a warning to voters: President Obama will have ‘more flexibility’ to weaken us if he’s re-elected in November.”

Palin was referring to an conversation between the two leaders in Seoul, South Korea, the audio of which was caught picked up by camera mics. In the brief back-and-forth, Obama told Medvedev that he needed incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin to give him “space” on the issue of missile defense. “This is my last election,” Obama was heard saying. “After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Accusing Obama of having “repeatedly conceded to foreign demands and backed down on missile defense,” Palin said in her statement Monday that the candid comments were just one more sign that four more years under the president would only weaken the country’s national security.

“We can’t know for certain what this newly revealed ‘flexibility’ means, but considering President Obama’s past actions, be sure it won’t involve a position of strength for America and our allies,” she wrote. “Russia has been thwarting us on one issue after another, including the rushed-through New START Treaty that many of us questioned after Obama insisted America ratify it first, then allow Russia to sit on it – unratified on their end – until it suited that foreign power’s needs.”

She added, “He has consistently taken a position of weakness and naïve trust in Putin’s Russia. … Now consider the state of our national defense under a President who whispers to a foreign power that he needs even ‘more flexibility’ to weaken us further.”

Mitt Romney — along with other critics of the president — quickly seized on the hot mic remarks, calling them “alarming and troubling.”

“This is no time for our president to be pulling his punches with the American people,” Romney said at a campaign stop in San Diego. “And not telling us what he’s intending to do with regards to our missile defense system, with regards to our military might and with regards to our commitment to Israel and with regard to our absolute conviction that Iran must have a nuclear weapon.”