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The New York Times editorial makes a simple point that hasn’t surfaced anywhere else that I’ve seen since Republican members of Congress started to behave like boors and bullies after the 2010 midterms.
Maybe Mr. McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, should have thought about the consequences before he signed the letter, which was drafted by Tom Cotton, a Republican of Arkansas, a junior senator with no foreign policy credentials. Instead of trying to be leaders and statesmen, the Republicans in Congress seem to think their role is outside the American government, divorced from constitutional principles, tradition and the security interests of the American people. …NYT
Outside. Not part of our American democracy. Rogues. Somehow superior to a mere democratic process. Morally irreproachable. Not subject to accountability or to, say, a mere Constitution.
Outside! Exactly the right term. They could be determining our future from the distance of, say, Uzbekistan, or (god forbid!) the UN! Not even Idaho, for god’s sake!
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A delicious putdown comes from a supreme political ethicist to our east:
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticized an open letter sent by 47 U.S. Republican Senators to Tehran about the ongoing negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, saying the move showed “disintegration” in U.S. politics. …
… The clerical Supreme Leader said the letter was ”a sign of the decay of political ethics in the American system”, and he described as laughable long-standing U.S. accusations of Iranian involvement in terrorism. …VOA
He’s right, and the irony makes it hard to decide whether we should laugh or weep in response. Of course, Republicans have demonstrated that they have troubles with ethics pretty much across the board and — perhaps more telling — they neither understand nor tolerate irony along with those other fancy words like “empathy.” “sharing,” and sissy stuff like “tolerance” and “cooperation.”
“Political ethics,” in Republican hands, becomes a contradiction in terms. Sigh.