Today's Mudline on Doonesbury included the following quote from Der Spiegel on GOP candidates:

"They're ruining the reputation of the United States. They lie, deceive, scuffle and speak every manner of idiocy."


My first comment is that among the idiocies they speak is accusing Obama of harming the United States' reputation abroad.


Of course, by comparison at least, the Republicans are doing far more harm to the reputation of the United States as indicated not only by the above quote, but by any number of foreign sources. In particular I remember Sen. Inhofe going to the climate conference in Copenhagen with the expressed intent of ensuring that no substantive actions came out ot the conference, and the European press just skewered him, but that is only one more example.


I fully expect that when then general opinion of the world, and our traditional allies in particular comes out in the course of the campaign, as I expect that it will, the Republicans and the right generally will try to turn the relative approval of Obama against him on the theory that real Americans don't care what foreigners think anyway. Something similar to this happened in 2004, and again in 2008, and I expect many times previously that I do not remember.


Cain already tried a similar campaign ploy this year and it didn't get him very far, but that was likely mostly because his campaign was already sinking for unrelated reasons--unrelated that is except that Cain attempted to use his ignorance of foreign affairs as a distraction from his other opinions and affairs, but I digress


What I really want to focus on right now is that when the Republicans do play their anti foreign opinion card we should ready, and part of what we should be ready with is that "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" is one of the foundation principles of the United States, and one of the first, most clearly, quite strongly and unequivocally expressed:


IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. . . . .