Republicans tilt right on Latin America

The Republican platform approved by the party’s convention earlier this week — a blueprint of what a Romney administration would do if it is elected — makes no bones about its hard-line policy toward Latin America. Its section on the region starts out by saying that “We will resist foreign influence in our hemisphere,” and calls Venezuela a “narco terrorist” state.

Much in line with the document’s general foreign policy plank — whose first line reads, “We are the party of peace through strength” — the new Republican platform’s Latin America section is also a sharp turn to the right from the same section in the party’s 2008 platform. That document started with the words, “Faith and family, culture and commerce, are enduring bonds among all the peoples of the Americas.”

Before we get into what I think of the newly released 2012 Republican platform’s section on