WH: No regrets for mocking Romney’s Russia assessment

The White House said there were “no” regrets over President Obama mocking Mitt Romney in 2012 for suggesting Russia was the United States’ top “geopolitical foe.”

Spokesman Jay Carney added Thursday that the administration did not view the Russian incursion into the Crimean Peninsula as a show of strength by the Kremlin.

{mosads}”You have a situation where Russia is violating international law because a government that Moscow supported was rejected by the vast majority of the Ukrainian people, because they wanted to determine their own future,” Carney said.

During the 2012 campaign, Obama criticized Republican nominee Romney’s declaration that Russia was America’s top thereat.

“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” Obama quipped during a presidential debate. “Because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Republican lawmakers have said the recent actions by Russia validate Romney’s warning.

“This president believes the Cold War was over,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), according to CBS News. “Vladimir Putin doesn’t believe the Cold War is over.”

“The fundamental problem is that this president doesn’t understand Vladimir Putin,” McCain added. “He does not understand his ambitions. He does not understand that Vladimir Putin is an old KGB colonel bent on restoration of the Soviet empire. …This president has never understood it.”

Carney denounced Republican critics who have slammed Obama as being weak toward Russia.

“Instead of being a partisan and attacking our president,” Carney said, they should focus on the violation of international law by Moscow.