Republicans exporting partisanship

Used to be an ironclad rule of American politics that partisanship ended at our shores. Even in the depths of the Cold War, few of Washington's commie-baiters dared to trash the political opposition while abroad. But for Republicans, 9/11 changed everything. This year we're getting used to seeing Bush, McCain & Co. taking partisan pot shots at Barack Obama before foreign audiences. Addressing the Israeli Knesset in May, Bush likened Obama's policies to Nazi appeasement. Several weeks ago McCain used a trip to Colombia and Mexico as an occasion to attack Obama's trade policies. All that came immediately after McCain had promised to forego partisan sniping while abroad; classic McCain double-talk, that.

Now real bottom-feeding surrogates are getting into the act. Yesterday while Obama visited Germany the country's newspaper of record, Die Welt, published a crude op-ed by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (MI) deriding him. It caused enough of a stir that the AP report quoted it. McCotter hasn't had the guts to put the English version up on his Congressional website, but he did post it at The Hill blog and Redstate. Here's a taste of what a Republican member of Congress thinks is the appropriate use of partisanship overseas.

Senator Obama has yet to show any understanding of the fundamental truths that have linked the Transatlantic Alliance through time and tribulations...

Maybe, while listening to JFK’s "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech on his I-pod beneath his safety helmet as he pedals past the Reichstag, Senator Obama will recall how, throughout the Cold War, the leaders of the Transatlantic Alliance resisted the siren song of popular pragmatism...

It explains why so many Americans, Europeans, other free peoples, and those yet to be free, are so dismayed at the prospect of Senator Obama’s potential elevation to the Leader of the Free World during a trans-national war against terrorism.

Thus in Berlin no one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to "end" the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a "distraction"? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe’s salons?

You get the idea: a semi-coherent rant dripping with sarcasm, the kind favored by wingnuts. Bad enough that Americans should be exposed to this offal. But why do Republicans believe that foreigners need to be drafted as extras into their partisan spectacles?