Republicans Lament the U.S.'s Ineligibility to Join France in the European Union

You may think that the title of this opinion piece is a joke from The Onion, yet that’s precisely what Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said in the Weekly Republican Address of April 25, 2009 when he declared that the new budget passed by Congress “makes the United States literally ineligible to join France in the European Union.”

He qualified the statement by reminding his geographically-challenged listeners that the United States isn’t actually in Europe. But then he hedged his bet by declaring that French President Nicolas Sarkozy “has been running around sounding like a Republican” and by holding up France as a model of deficit discipline.

You know Republicans are grasping for straws when they start holding up France as a role model. You’ve hear of France, right? The country of universal health care, five-week vacations, same-sex civil unions, no death penalty, no ostentatious display of religion in the public schools, and other values that the flag-bearers of the Republican Party base so cherish. 

Senator Alexander actually has a thought-provoking policy reason for indicating that it’s now alright to feel the love in our “love-hate relationship with the French.” It’s because we should emulate “the contrary French” by promoting nuclear energy instead of whatever Obama is proposing. Not that anyone’s truly provoked into thinking about nuclear energy at a time when we’re just getting started with renewable energy from sources such as sunlight, wind, and tides.

Nevetheless, it’s well worth debating the interest for the United States in increase its reliance on nuclear energy under proper government oversight, especially if you're looking to stake out a position unlikely to be supported by Democrats. After all, Democrats (and anyone living near a proposed site) have traditionally been more anti-nuke than Republicans (and anyone not living near a proposed site).

The senator rightly notes that France receives a whopping 80% of its electric energy needs from nuclear power plants and even exports nuclear energy while the U.S. receives 20% of its electricity from nuclear energy. He further applauds France for having “one of the lowest electric and second lowest carbon emission rates in the entire European Union.”

But doesn’t it seem odd, not to mention hypocritical, that freedom-frying, oil-drilling, free-market-bruising Republicans for whom any policy out of France typically smacks of socialism would suddenly admire France’s energy policy and call for America “to build one hundred new nuclear power plants in the next twenty years” and “recycle the [nuclear] fuel the way France does.”

In short, the party that fears that Democrats want to install European-style social policies in the U.S. now favors a policy that exists in France because of a centralized government and European social policy. (For the record I note that 39% of my electric bill in Paris is made up of taxes and public service contribution, including a tax on the public service contribution.)

Leaving aside the irony of Lamar Alexander’s choice of a role model and the fact that any Republican affection for nuclear energy—not to mention of France—is not to be taken seriously due to both investment costs and long-term mindset it requires, a Weekly Republican Address that speaks so kindly of France must be taken as a positive sign. It means the Republican Party is willing to publicly acknowledge that America is no longer the Texas-centric nation of yesteryear and that we, too, can learn from other countries.

To fully appreciate the graceless pirouette of this newfound, Onion-worthy Republican Francophilia, watch Senator Alexander’s 5-minute address by clicking on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCew-81O47w.
 

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