GOP senators rip Obama for ‘bumps in the road’ comment

By Ramsey Cox - 09/26/12 01:45 PM ET

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) criticized President Obama’s recent comment about “bumps in the road” in the Middle East during his presidency.

“President Obama recently said the broader Middle East has been experiencing some ‘bumps in the road,’” the senators said in a press release Tuesday, the same day the president addressed the United Nations. “If the president had taken some time to hold even one meeting with his foreign colleagues during his visit to the U.N. General Assembly in New York today, perhaps they would have told him what has really happened in the Middle East on his watch.”

Obama has been taking heat for it since making the statement during in an interview on “60 Minutes” when asked about the Arab Spring.

“I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance,” Obama said. “But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because, you know, in a lot of these places, the one organizing principle has been Islam.”

McCain, Graham and Ayotte listed problems in seven Middle Eastern countries, countering that they’re “not a bump in the road.”

“It is not a ‘bump in the road’ when Al-Qaeda fighters and their terrorist allies have been gaining ground in Libya, a country the United States helped to liberate but has not sufficiently supported in its ongoing struggle against lawlessness and violent extremism,” the senators said. “It is not a ‘bump in the road’ when the relationship between the United States and Israel has never been worse at a time when the threat from Iran has never been greater and when events in the Middle East have never been more tumultuous or uncertain.”

The foreign policy hawks have accused Obama on the Senate floor of poor leadership in foreign affairs.

“None of these events are ‘bumps in the road,’” Graham, McCain and Ayotte said. “They are failures of American leadership. And they call for the United States to begin leading more actively, rather than trying to lead from behind.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also criticized Obama’s comment, saying it was insensitive and inaccurate.