I am Proved Right

The Senate Republicans have failed to ratify the UN treaty on the rights of the disabled that Rick Santorum was so up in arms about. Honestly this is par for the course for Republicans. They are deeply skeptical of anything that sounds like internationalism.

Treaties that are explicitly bilateral in nature have some hope of passing, like the START 2 treaty Obama signed. Treaties proposed by international organizations, however, have no chance. This is not new to the Republican party. The UN treaty on the rights of the child was scuttled in a similar matter 17 years ago. That time the arguments put forward by the Republican Party were very similar. Parents rights over the child would be infringed. In that case it was the right of parents to beat their children. In both cases however this was just cover to stop the advancement of treaties linked to the UN. The Republican party in its modern incarnation is fundamentally based around skepticism of the UN and internationalism in general. In fact, since 1995 only two treaties negotiated by the UN have been ratified by the United States, The Convention on Cyber Crime and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Many times the Republicans don't even justify shooting down treaties, as in the case of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Fundamentally this indicates a party that is perfectly fine with its record of unilateralism and imperialism in the Bush administration. The Republican Party in its foreign policy reveals what it hides in its domestic policy; xenophobic, conspiratorial, and autocratic.