Romney blunder on Muslim Brotherhood

Matthew Yglesias points out a major blunder by Romney in last night's debate:

While Mitt Romney impressed me and most other reporters with his presentation, it would be good for some to observe that he also put forward a completely insane policy idea on the leading issue of the day:

We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

To put it bluntly, the trouble here is that the Muslim Brotherhood just isn't a violent terrorist organization, and certainly doesn't commit acts of violence against the United States. It's an extremely traditionalist multinational civil society organization. It's true that a lot of violent types used to be in the Brotherhood and now they're in terrorist groups, but used to be is the key phrase here, they left the Brotherhood because the Brotherhood wouldn't sign on for their agenda. In one clause, Romney's just gone and broadened the war to include a huge new category of people who have no intention of waging war against the United States or even against Israel.

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Mitt Romney displayed zero understanding of political Islam or global terrorism, none of his Republican opponents called him on it, and as far as I know, nobody in the press (the same press, you'll recall, that's concerned with the Pursuit of Truth above all else) bothered to notice.

I remembering being surprised when Romney mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood, but I just assumed he was tossing out the names of as many Islamic political organizations as he could and got a little excited. I don't think Romney would actually be dumb enough to make opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood one of the pillars of his foreign policy. The organization may not be secular like our "friend" President Mubarak of Egypt, but, unlike him, they are willing to work within a democratic system.