Richard Grenell, an openly gay foreign policy spokesman for GOP presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, resigned Tuesday over what he called "the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign."
"While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama's foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished," Grenell said in a resignation statement in a statement obtained by the Washington Post.
Grenell's hiring was widely criticized by those both on the left and right and he also came under fire for a number of Twitter posting he deleted poking fun at the physical appearances of many women politicians and pundits, including Callista Gingrich and Rachel Maddow.
But it was Grenell's sexual orientation that he said ultimately led to his exit from the campaign. Grenell's hiring earlier was announced April 19 but he had yet to make any public remarks or on-the-record comments on foreign policy issues for the campaign, even during the days marking the one-year anniversary of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Many pundits found this fact puzzling considering the Osama raid was a major international incident on which Grenell could have commented officially. Some posited the campaign hired Grenell to fill a diversity quota and they were keeping him under wraps because of conservative and liberal attacks on his homosexuality. Other said he was hired in April but officially wouldn't begin his tenure as spokesman until May 1.
The attacks began soon after the announcement of Grenell's hiring, the most overt coming from Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart and National Review's Matthew Franck.
"I agree that Grenell's being openly gay is, in itself, of no consequence for his service in the Romney campaign," Franck wrote on April 27. "But Grenell has made a particular crusade of the marriage issue, with a kind of unhinged devotion that suggests a man with questionable judgment."
Franck also suggested in the post that if Grenell received any State Department position under a Romney administration, "he could pursue his passion for that same agenda."
Capehart, on the other side of the political spectrum, blasted Grenell for his position in the Romney campaign and how this must clash with his personal beliefs. Grenell had earlier taken Capehart and leaders of gay activists groups to task for not pushing LGBT issues with President Obama.
"Gay leaders in Washington deserve this duplicitous president. After all, they have protected Obama since 2008 when they ignored his public position against gay marriage but attacked John McCain for having the exact same stance. These and other hypocritical actions by gays and lesbians encouraged Obama to take them for granted," Grenell wrote in a March 16 op-ed for the LGBT newspaper The Washington Blade.
Capehart fired back, writing on April 24, "Now that the openly gay Grenell is the new foreign policy and national security spokesman for Mitt Romney, I wonder if he has lived up to his own ideals."
The Romney campaign, who reportedly tried multiple times to convince Grenell to stay on staff, issued a statement Wednesday defend Grenell and his qualifications for the job.
"We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons," Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades said. "We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill."
However, qualifications aside, the firestorm over his hiring eventually led to his loss from the campaign. In Grenell's letter to the Post, he concluded with "I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team."
In a May 1 piece for National Review responding to the Franck attacks on Grenell, Deputy Managing Editor Kevin D. Williamson stated, "My congratulations to Matthew Franck et al. for having successfully chased Richard Grenell out of the Romney campaign, handing the Democrats a nice little example of Republicans' elevating their sexual obsessions over foreign policy (for Pete's sake). I do hope that Mr. Romney extends the appropriate gratitude for the manufactured controversy."
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