Obama Derangement Syndrome As Foreign Policy

And people say American exports are dead. Why, the GOP is doing a bang-up job of exporting knee-jerk reactionary Obamahate to all corners of the globe.

An interesting pattern has been emerging in the Republican Party's handling of foreign policy: Individual GOP officials are now making a regular point of not only formulating an alternative foreign policy, to be presented to the American people and debated in Congress -- they're acting on it too, and undermining the official White House policies at multiple turns:

• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is visiting Honduras in order to support the recent military coup against a leftist president, which has been opposed by the Obama administration and all the surrounding countries in the region. (Late Update: DeMint's office says he is not taking sides during his visit to the current Honduran leadership, denying the New York Times reports that this was his intention.)

• Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be going to the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen, bringing a "Truth Squad" to tell foreign officials there that the American government will not take any action: "Now, I want to make sure that those attending the Copenhagen conference know what is really happening in the United States Senate."

Those are just a couple of examples, but really, at what point do we just wash our hands of these bozos?

Yes, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi went abroad to help conduct American diplomacy, as did Republicans during the Bush years. But Wingnuts screamed that the act of Democratic legislators going overseas itself was an affront to the White House, when the Democrats actually did it to support many of Bush's policies (or at least not to attack them).

The Republicans are going overseas in order to specifically attack the sitting President's foreign policies, and make no apologies for doing so. And when anyone says anything about it, the wingnuts say "At some point a Liberal did it to Bush, so we're 100% exonerated." There's a difference, folks.

The Wingers just think you're too stupid to notice.