The GOP takes partisanship international
By Scot Lehigh GLOBE COLUMNIST MARCH 18, 2015
BACK IN November, an exultant GOP seemed blessed with fair winds and following seas. Although a president’s party almost always suffers losses in midterm elections, the Democrats’ setbacks had cost them the Senate, unifying Congress under Republican control.
Republicans could now move from a posture of opposition to winning public approval by demonstrating the serious, substantive alternative they offered. That, at least, was the hope.
So how are things going so far? Well, certainly not according to that optimistic script.
The nation has become so inured to brinksmanship over budgetary matters that those battles are dismissed as so much background noise, even when the agency under threat is as vital as the Department of Homeland Security. Both the stare-downs and the elaborate political maneuvers required to end them are rituals made necessary by the combination of a weak speaker and a rambunctious right-wing caucus.
But Republicans have now extended their attempts to thwart the president into the realm of foreign affairs — and unlike the fiscal skirmishes, this has played out under unforgiving flood lights on the international stage. Nor is this new thrust one where the GOP’s congressional leadership has had its hand forced by its members.
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