A view from Europe: Anti-European sentiment is on the rise among Republican presidential candidates [View all]

[pampango]

in America, raising questions about the fragility of transatlantic ties

Mitt Romney, one of the leading Republican United States presidential candidates, has informed his countrymen over the past few weeks that Barack Obama is working to turn America into Europe. This, one might think, is good news. Presumably it suggests that a unified west is closer to becoming a reality. The president is working for ever greater convergence in the world's greatest alliance.

Romney contends that under Obama, a "European-style welfare state" is America's destiny. Or, in another version of this horrific vision that permeates most of the candidate's campaign speeches, "a European-style entitlement society". Obama, according to Romney, "takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America". ... Not to be outdone - candidate Newt Gingrich, in his South Carolina victory speech last Saturday night, detected the emergence of a "brand new, secular European-style bureaucratic socialism" in America.

The Eurobashers on the US right use a few standard leitmotifs to make their case against the "EU-nuchs", whose "values and spines have dissolved in a lukewarm bath of multilateral, transnational, secular, and postmodern fudge", to quote the ironic characterisation of writer Timothy Garton Ash. At times, anti-Europeanism can be quite funny. Especially, when skillfully expressed by George W. Bush who famously said: "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."

The question is how seriously to take all of this Eurobaloney? In this Republican presidential primary campaign, Europe has been nothing but a foil. Anti-Europeanism has been a code word for anti-liberalism. At the same time, Americans have long appealed to European politicians not to pander to the anti-US segments of the European public, fearing that fleeting prejudice could turn into lasting chauvinism. ... Should Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and the rest of the Republican candidates really be held to a different standard?

http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1417/europe-is-a-dirty-word-on-the-us-political-campaign-trail

It must be weird to hear all the bloviating from a political party in a traditional strong ally. It's easy from this side of the Atlantic to tell Europeans to just ignore the pandering that republican presidential candidates engage in, but it is inevitable that this kind of rhetoric must give them something to think about.