Mitt Romney. [Xinhua]

On the 11th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, US Congress resumed its sessions after a five-week summer holiday. That same day, the Chicago teacher strike made headlines and sadly a US ambassador and other three diplomats were killed in Libya. How will these incidents influence the American presidential election race? Naturally, people would presume that those tragedies would create an opportunity for the Romney camp to attack Barack Obama as the events took place during his administration. Furthermore, Mitt Romney would naturally get the support from a Republican-dominated Congress. But in reality, when the Congress held a press conference after the first day’s sessions, they talked about the job market, economy, military budget cuts, national debt and energy legislation, among other things, without mentioning a single word about Romney. How so?

 

In fact, Romney has previously had disagreements with Republican congressmen about various matters. Romney criticized the bipartisan deal of increasing the American debt ceiling last Sunday in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” show, claiming that the Republican Party had made a bad call.

 

During last Tuesday’s press conference, one reporter who noticed that Romney’s name hadn’t even been mentioned, asked House Speaker John Boehner to comment on Romney’s Sunday criticism. The Speaker was not too thrilled with that and just replied that he and his colleagues were trying to deal with the spending issues, without any mention of Romney. The Republicans appear to have some hard feelings towards Romney.