Matt Yglesias points to an article in the Hill revealing the GOP’s prime legislative agenda for this summer.
In an e-mail sent to GOP aides and lobbyists late last week, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt’s (R-Mo.) office outlined its list of “priority legislation” on the post-Memorial Day calendar. The list includes gun-manufacturer liability, postal reform and the Central America Free Trade Agreement.
Maybe I should be glad that’s all that’s on their agenda: I’m for CAFTA, after all, and Matt suggests the other two points won’t have that much of an impact. But even if we add a stalled desire for social security privatization to this list, I’m wondering where any concern with domestic security or foreign policy went. Not even a nominal effort from the "Democrats don’t get it" crowd. And it’s not just this summer, either: besides the reconsideration of the Patriot act, what have we gotten since the 2004 election? Terry Schiavo, Social Security privatization, bankruptcy law tightening, and an attempt at scrapping the filibuster. In fairness, legislatures do tend to focus more on domestic concerns whereas the executive branch has more latitude in foreign policy affairs. But certainly there’s something that needs legislative consideration?
And the administration, too, has been focused on its domestic agenda, especially social security. Iraq goes on, of course, but the administration seems to be in containment mode. And on North Korea, it’s tying itself into intellectual knots trying to defend a non-diplomatic, non-military response to the country’s nuclear capability. (If "response" isn’t too generous a word.)
Now, I know the Dems have some thinking to do on this — and lord knows I haven’t had much new to say on foreign policy lately, in part because I’m still trying to figure out what a reasonable liberal foreign policy would be. I’m used to having conceptual shortcuts that I can apply to various issues that let me make sense of them without wading through the thick of detailed exposition on a given subject; so far, foreign policy as an arena of expertise seems to resist that, given that it is based in the specifics of the relations between individual nations. Leftish models applied in a blanket fashion - like imperialism - do capture the reality of some situations (the U.S. intervention in Latin America, say) but are less than adequate in other fields. Same for democracy promotion, or national greatness, or whatever guiding theory is driving the conservatives. I’m still trying to parse it all out.
But while specific shortfalls in addressing foreign policy and domestic security concerns is certainly understandable for either party (both of whom, after all, want to win elections to make decisions about domestic legislation, the ultimate spoils of victory), the sudden silence from the GOP shows up their election-time security concerns as transparent posturing. Now we see where their real interests lie, and they’re every bit as domestic as Dick Gephardt’s.
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