Last night, Steve Bannon went to Fairhope, Alabama to stump for Roy Moore in the special US Senate election a week away and attacked an unlikely foe. In addition to taking swipes at Moore’s actual opponent Doug Jones, he launched a direct verbal attack on Mitt Romney’s lack of military service in the 1960s. He put Moore’s Vietnam service as an MP officer on a pedestal to segué into the Romney criticism. Beyond saying Romney used his religious deferments to avoid Vietnam, he attacked the Romney family for having five sons and zero Desert Storm/OIF/OEF veterans among them:
You had five sons, not one day of service in Afghanistan and Iraq… Where were the Romneys during those wars? You want to talk about honor and integrity, brother, bring it. Bring it down here to Alabama. (Video can be seen here)
You may recall that previous military service was far from a central issue in the 2012 presidential election when Romney was the Republican nominee. As I detail more fully in the book, Romney did get into a little political trouble for seeming to equate his son’s efforts to help him on the campaign trail with military service.
For the record, Wikipedia describes Bannon’s naval service during the late seventies and early eighties as his political awakening. Also for the record, the man he helped elect as president used educational and medical deferments (potentially dubious ones) to avoid military service during the same period Mitt Romney faced the draft.
Jeremy Teigen 