Hmm, I don't know about the 'not at all exclusionary' argument. Even if it is true that both need more spending at this moment, there is eventually a limit on the amount of money that can and will be spend on 'knowledge for the sake of knowledge'. At some point you still need to argue that spending a marginal extra euro on particle physics is better than spending it on, say, pure mathematics, or  archeology, or ecology.

As for the PR: of course it's true, but it worth considering that most fields wouldn't even dream of trying to get these amounts of money, because no one would stop and listen to their arguments why they need billions of euros, no matte how good their PR would be.

In the end, I would argue that past applications really are a large reason particle physics can even consider to have a PR-fight for billions.