What the World Thinks of the GOP

Recent European press op-ed about the American Republican primaries

THE GERMAN PRESS

The Republican presidential contest in America is a “freak show,” said

Marc Pitzke in the German Der Spiegel. The candidates vie with one another

to spew the most outrageous hard-right positions,  denying evolution while

endorsing torture and joking about electrocuting illegal immigrants. How

did a major  party in the world’'s sole superpower become a “club of

liars, debtors, betrayers, adulterers, exaggerators,  hypocrites, and

ignoramuses?”

These know-nothings are enabled by a U.S. press that has been “neutered by

 the demands of political correctness” so that it can'’t say what’s

obvious: These people are daft! Instead, it “proclaims one clown after the

next to be the new front-runner.” The current favorite, Newt Gingrich, is 

actually considered an intellectual merely because he can create sentences

with multiple clauses. Scarcely a  one has even the most basic grasp of

foreign policy. One said Africa is a country, another that the Taliban

rule  in Libya. Collectively, “they expose a political, economic,

geographic, and historical ignorance that makes  George W. Bush look like

a scholar.”

THE FRENCH PRESS

That’'s the scariest part, said Lorraine Millot in the Paris Liberation.

The only GOP candidate who knows a thing about diplomacy, Jon Huntsman, is

dead last in most polls. The others “careen to extreme positions that

include starting new wars and abandoning old allies.” And that’'s when

they even have a position. Herman Cain, now thankfully out of the race,

was the front-runner even though he couldn't find a single coherent word

to say about President Obama'’s policy on Libya. He even boasted of

knowing little about foreign countries. And yet it was his adultery, not

his astounding ignorance that brought him down.

THE BRITISH PRESS

There’'s a simple explanation for this bizarre phenomenon, said Max

Hastings in the London Daily Mail. In the “lunatic, gun-toting badlands of

America'’s Hicksville, Tea Party country,” it'’s considered suspiciously

elitist to show any interest in modern science or the world beyond

America’'s borders. “Say what you like about British politics, no MP of

any party would dare to offer themselves as town dogcatcher while knowing

as little about the world as the Republican presidential candidates.” We

take public service seriously. Yet we in Britain, and everyone in the rest

of the world, will suffer if “one of the lunatics” vying for the

nomination makes it to the White House. “The American political system has

seldom, if ever, looked so inadequate.”

Don’t worry, said Matthew Norman in the London Independent. The fact that

Gingrich is the latest threat to Mitt Romney’'s inevitability just

“confirms how inevitable” Romney’'s nomination is. The thrice-married,

ethically challenged Gingrich is unlikable in the extreme. Which means the

nominee will be Romney, “the slimiest, phoniest opportunist to run for

president since...well, ever.” So sit back and enjoy this circus passing

for a presidential election. It can’'t possibly end in a GOP victory. Can

it?