REPUBLICANS CONTINUE TO SHOW TWO FACES

 

…Crowds in Paris grew to over a million, many holding, “I AM CHARLIE” signs.

 

Conservatives will criticize, regardless of how it makes the nation appear to others outside the US.

It’s becoming ridiculous in trying to find the logic behind the Grand Old Party.

Instead of doing what past Republican leaderships have done, they continue to only offer negative comments, even if they are acting the opposite of what they have historically demonstrated.

Over ten years ago, the Republicans and the Bush Administration had talked loudly down to the French for refusing to support Bush’s war in Iraq.

The top Republicans in Congress re-named American French fries, “freedom fries”.  French toast became the ridiculous, “freedom toast” and the then Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, criticized the “old European” French.

 

Even the GOP President Bush mocked an American reporter for speaking in French to the French president.  The 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, was ridiculed by the administration for being “too French” and even “looking French”, and his fluency in the French language was a liability in the then presidential campaign.

But today, the conservatives are saying that John Kerry, the current Secretary of State, and his boss, President Obama, are being ridiculed by the GOP for “not being nice enough to the French”.

So, as usual, the two-faced conservatives continue to be “consistently, inconsistent”.

First, let me make it clear.  The White House did make a big mistake when they neglected to send a much higher profile US representative to attend the march in Paris showing solidarity against their extreme Muslim terrorists.  I have been saying for months that the president and the White House staff have become somewhat “tone deaf”, ever since Rahm Emanuel left as Obama’s Chief of Staff, in dealing with critical White House activities.  This is just one more example.

Someone, such as the White House Chief of Staff (CoS) should have jumped in and said “This is a case where appearances matter, and someone at least at the Cabinet level should be representing the US in this demonstration.”  The White House staff should never allow these kind of screw-ups, like when Obama immediately went to play golf right after the first American hostage, James Foley, was be-headed by ISIL in a broadcasted video.  A strong White House CoS would never have let that occur.

But I digress.

The point is, prior to the Obama’s administration, partisan political issues used to, “stop at the water’s edge”.  When any issues or discussions went outside the US, both political parties supported our president, regardless of their political affiliation. 

That concept died when the GOP lost in 2008, and when Senator Mitch McConnell stated that the Republican’s #1 goal was to, “Make Obama a one term president.”

Of course, the first one to jump into the GOP Klown Kar this time was the Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.  Per Senator Cruz, “Our president should have been there, because we must never hesitate to stand with our allies.”

Fox News just couldn’t be left out when their Greta van Susteren said the absence was “embarrassing” and that “Obama should not have snubbed Paris.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL.) a potential 2016 presidential candidate declared it “a mistake not to send someone.”

(Mind you, neither Cruz or Rubio got themselves to Paris to attend the demonstration.)

A former Bush administration official, Dov Zakheim, also wrote an article complaining that Obama and other officials “opted out of what may have been the most important demonstration for decency since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

As I had said, it was all a big White House mistake, and they have since admitted that they really “blew it’ and should have sent someone of a higher stature.  It has been officially recognized as a royal WH screw-up, and that has also been acknowledged even by Politico who called it “Barack Obama’s French kiss-off.”   The New York Daily News even stated that Obama and his lieutenants “let the world down.”

But, if you take away the nation’s Republicans and the American press, those in Europe, and France in particular, don’t seem to see it that way.

French President François Hollande has said Obama had been “very present” in his response to last week’s attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish market.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in French to address the people of France.  The French TV channel TF1 said that Kerry’s “poignant statement in French” would “go down in history.” The French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy said on CNN that Kerry’s French statement “is a great moment of brotherhood and solidarity.”

The reality is that with a terrorist attack in a city as large as Paris, sending the president across the ocean on <36 hours’ notice to an open-air rally of hundreds of thousands of people (with the possibility of a suicide terrorist attack), it was never a real possibility for security and logistical reasons alone.

Yes, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, who was already in Paris, he could have dropped by.  But it was simply a giant screw-up. Those at the White House obviously didn’t understand how significant the event would become, and they were late in finding out that the leaders of some 40 countries would be in attendance, including the PM of Israel.

Oh, and today, the conservatives are now calling John Kerry as being “insufficiently pro-French”.  He’s accused of “snubbing the French because he had the nerve to be in meetings in India during the Sunday demonstration”. It didn’t matter that he had signed a condolence book at the French Embassy (as did Obama) or that he was in Paris, at the end of his India trip.

Obama also did not get credit for his call to President Hollande on the day of the attack, or the various statements he has made about the attack or, most importantly, all the vast counterterrorism help the U.S. government is giving France and other European countries.

Once again, the conservatives are guilty of partisan squabbling, hypocrisy,  and more of their vast inconsistencies.

In other words, “no change here!”

Copyright G.Ater  2015