Posted on 10/03/2004 10:44:15 AM PDT by quidnunc
Regardless of whether it came through clearly in Thursdays debate, the gap between Republicans and Democrats on foreign policy has reached truly alarming proportions.
Not even during the 1980s, when deep divisions separated hawkish Republicans like Ronald Reagan from dovish Democrats like John Kerry on issues like Central America and the nuclear freeze, did our two parties disagree as much over Americas place and proper course in the world.
Evidence comes from an opinion survey conducted by Gallup for the German Marshall Fund of the United States and summarized in a recent issue of The Weekly Standard magazine. Ostensibly designed to highlight stark differences between Europeans and Americans, the more startling disagreements emerge among Americans themselves. Indeed, on some of the survey questions, the gap between Republicans and Democrats was even greater than that separating Republicans from French, German and Spanish respondents.
The results suggest that the typical Democrat is now farther to the left of not only Republicans but most Europeans as well. If, in Robert Kagan's famous phrasing, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus," American Democrats must be from Pluto.
Item 1: Despite charges that the Bush administration has needlessly damaged ties with our European allies and European perceptions of America, Democrats are far more likely than Europeans (by a margin of 62 to 40 percent) to "strongly disapprove" of the Bush administrations foreign policy.
Item 2: While 71 percent of Republicans would support the use of military force even without United Nations approval, 56 percent of Democrats would oppose such use without such permission.
Item 3: Whereas 84 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of independents would be willing to bypass the U.N. when vital U.S. interests are at stake, only 40 percent of Democrats would do so (a lower percentage than expressed by citizens of Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Great Britain, majorities in each of which favored protection of such interests over acquiring a U.N. mandate).
Item 4: The majority of British and Dutch respondents and 83 percent of Republicans support the deployment of their country's troops in Iraq, but 63 percent of Democrats oppose those deployments (and would, presumably, favor their immediate withdrawal).
Item 5: Only 48 percent of Democrats (compared to 73 percent of Republicans) agree that peace is best ensured through military strength, with a comparable disparity emerging over the role of military force as the most appropriate way to fight terrorism (with 63 percent of Republicans but only 23 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of Europeans agreeing).
Even more disturbing differences emerge over defense spending (with Democrats four times as likely as Republicans to believe we are spending too much rather than too little) and the relationship between war and justice (with two-thirds of Republicans agreeing that war is sometimes necessary to secure justice, but only 35 percent of Democrats accepting such a proposition, thereby raising the question of whether war is ever justified in the Democratic world view).
Some of these discrepancies may simply be the consequence of election-year partisanship and a virulent Democratic distaste for a Republican president; after all, Democrats were hardly conspicuous in the 1990s in their opposition to military force and their demand for U. N. approval when the Clinton administration ignored the U. N. and used such force in Kosovo and other places.
But one senses that something else also is afoot here, that the Democratic Party is careening ever more rapidly toward the radical left on foreign policy as foreign policy comes to matter more, to the extent that Michael Moore now represents the Democratic mainstream and the content of that mainstream is increasingly pacifistic, post-nationalist and even anti-American in nature and instinct.
The Democratic presidential nominees waffling on so many issues becomes more understandable in lieu of such survey data. John Kerry can't tell us what he'd do differently in Iraq not so much because he doesn't know, but because he knows full well that what he will do is what his party will demand — cut and run, there and elsewhere.
bmp
Thanks---Its frighteningly true---I believe we would be better with a population near 170 moillion and have dems evicted. Preferably to a sandy Islamic country. Are we prepared for civil war? Because that seems a real posibility.
Good find - thanks for posting!
The Bush campaign had two choices once John Kerry won the Democrat nomination for President. 1 label the senator as the most liberal Senator in America slightly to the left of Ted Kennedy and out of touch with the values and views of main stream American voters AKA Michael Dukakis. 2 use Kerry’s flip flopping and waffling to show that he has no direct moral or intellectual compass proving that he is unfit to assume the role as Commander in Chief. That Kerry is both a liberal and a flip flopper makes this an interesting race and choice of political tactic all the more important.
He only flip flops to hide his true leaning. He's an anit-American communist and that's where he'll lead us.
bump for good info
(survey shows that democrats are further left than socialist europe)
HERE ARE THE NON SUBSCRITPTION LINKS
this editorial-
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/story_Editorial.php?storyid=26672
Editorial page
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/section_editorial.php
Democrat Gaz
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/
The place to start for Arkansas newpapers on line content, as well as the coverage of the Hogs
http://www.nwanews.com
Fact is, the "Democratic" SOCIALIST party pledges their Nationalism to the United Nations. They HATE the United States....
Just as in WWII, when the SOCIALIST Germans pledges their Nationalism to Germany and to Hitler, the "Democrats" are NO DIFFERENT!!!
They are simply United Nation's Socialists instead of National Socialists--, United Nazis rather than just Nazis.
Now it's correct.
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