Mitch McConnell vs. Western Europe

I find it really annoying when Republicans — and especially the GOP leader in the Senate — say things like this:

I think [the Democrats] — on the — on some of the big issues they’ve tried to go in the wrong direction. And we’re not going to sign on to efforts to turn America into a western European country, which I think is the net result of something like the energy tax cap and trade bill and the health care bill.

Is that what we want to say to our allies? That becoming like them is the worst thing we could do? I’m sure McConnell was mainly interesting in scoring a few points, but he did that with an appeal to narrow-minded nativism.

Not just narrow-minded, but unnecessary. There are substantive reasons to oppose the import of European social policies. All McConnell had to do was substitute the words “bloated welfare state” for “western European country” and I could’ve gone right along my merry way.