The Mayor of the Village proposes to scrap the foreign policy debate
by digby
Mark Halperin helpfully explains to silly voters what’s important to them:
This is a proposal that probably won’t be taken up but I’d be for scrapping foreign policy as the topic of the last debate. I think we’ve had a fair amount of foreign policy discussion. The last debate should be all about the Fiscal Cliff. 90 minutes. What are you going to do about taxes? What are you going to do about spending? Because we’re not having the adequate debate if it doesn’t happen in that last debate, which it won’t because it’s now on foreign policy. We’re never going to have them talk about it. It is the issue facing the country. It is the issue for whoever gets elected because, if they don’t deal with it in January, we’re going to have a world of trouble.
Foreign policy is for the birds. Of course, just five years ago it was the only thing worth talking about. When Republicans wanted to talk about it. Now it’s all about taxes and spending. Oddly, that’s what Repubicans want to talk about now too.
This is not to say that I wouldn’t welcome a debate on the economy, jobs, income inequality, education, climate change, immigration and women’s rights among a dozen other important topics. But the fiscal cliff? It’s a phony crisis that only plays into the hands of the deficit hysterics who are determined to use any excuse they can to cut the hell out of our already tattered safety net. The differences between the two parties are so infinitesimal on this anyway that all we’d have is a hour of bullshit designed to make the voters forget about the fact that they are getting screwed by millionaires and worry instead about fiscal phantoms. No thanks.
And hey, if we get lucky in an hour long foreign policy debate we might even find out that foreign countries exist outside the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. I’m so old I remember when we used to talk about the Far East and South America once in a while. I’m not holding my breath. I have a feeling it’s going to be a truly impressive dick measuring contest with Obam finding ways to mention that he killed bin Laden at every opportunity and Mitt rsponding that if it had been him he’d have killed him twice as hard. (I’m anticipating a major next day hangover.)
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