Former Republican Senate Majority Leader and presidential candidate Bob Dole offered a ringing endorsement for President Barack Obama’s nominee to become ambassador to the United Nations, just nine days after he blasted the current state of the Republican Party in a television interview.
Dole weighed in on Obama’s appointment of Samantha Power, the author and former Obama adviser, to replace Susan Rice as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Rice has been appointed by Obama as U.S. national security adviser.
“Having known Samantha from her years as a journalist through her recent service at the White House, I applaud President Obama’s decision,” he said in a statement. “I am confident that, in her new post, Samantha will be a tireless advocate who will promote U.S interests and values around the globe,” Dole said in a statement.
Dole garnered modest criticism for his endorsement on Twitter.
“BOB DOLE???? Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha………you are out of your mind if you think Americans don’t see thru you,” tweeted one user.
New York Times journalist John Harwood quickly jumped to Dole’s defense, tweeting, “It appears there are people on Twitter who don’t understand who Bob Dole is, what he represents and the ways he has served his country.”
Dole recently criticized the Republican Party in a May Fox News interview, even doubting Ronald Reagan would not be successful in the modern GOP.
“I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says closed for repairs until New Year’s Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas,” Dole said.
Power, who worked as an adviser to Barack Obama during his time in the U.S. Senate and resigned from his 2008 presidential campaign for making a profane statement calling Obama’s 2008 Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton a “monster.”
“We fucked up in Ohio. In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win,” Power said in a March 2008 interview with the Scottish newspaper The Scotsman. “She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything … if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”