That one of the current group of Republican crazies running for office may become President in a year or so is difficult to imagine. Yet it remains a possibility. It would be like Don Brash becoming PM here. Oh, wait, that almost happened...
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| Copyright Gage Skidmore, 2012 |
But the thing his Republican rivals seem most fixated on is the fact he's a Mormon. Go figure.
Maybe hardcore Republicans are wired differently. That might explain their inability to see what seems to be in plain view. Take Newt Gingrich as an example. He's now being billed as a "conservative revolutionary", as if the two concepts aren't contradictory, and the "grassroots" candidate. But Gingrich is as Establishment as they come, having been Republican House Speaker (before being dumped after an ethics scandal), and he's been a Washington insider for the better part of 30 years.
That ethics scandal would be enough to send most politicians into permanent disgrace, but not Gingrich. Nor does it seem to matter that during the period when he was attacking Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair he was himself engaged in an adulterous affair. I guess some people can forgive any sort of dishonesty and hypocrisy in a candidate, so long as he's not a Mormon.
Right now it would be easy to dismiss the entire Republican Party as a joke, and assume that Barack Obama will clean the floor come November. This would be a mistake. How many of us were convinced that the village idiot by the name of George W. Bush would never be elected, or re-elected?
The Republicans have a got shot at winning because, for all his grand eloquence, for all his stirring oratory, Barack Obama has been a colossal disappointment. He promised change and a new approach, but has delivered precious little. Washington is run by corporate lobbyists, and the House representatives who make the laws spend most of their time either campaigning for office or fundraising. The two-yearly electoral cycle contributes to corporate capture of the political system and makes it difficult for politicians to enact policies harmful to big business.
This is why the Democrats blew the once-in-a-generation opportunity they had in 2008 to reform the entire system. They controlled the House and Senate, and their man was in the White House. But the Democrat Party are so compromised by corporate lobbyists and so divided that they couldn't organise a brawl in a Mongrel Mob vs Black Power rugby league game.
So why would people vote for the party that promised change and delivered more of the same? They may as well give their vote to that other party of snake-oil salespeople. Or just stay home and not vote at all.
There's plenty of time to go, and maybe the Republican nominee will turn out to be the campaign trainwreck we all expect him to be. But I'm not willing to put my money on an Obama victory, and I can well imagine that come this time next year they'll be inaugurating President Mitt. Or President Newt.
The huge amount of money plus very powerful lobby groups paralyses the USA Federal Government. Not so much a lack of Presidential will just an inability to move without support from vested interests, where here in NZ..........
ReplyDeleteThe US political system is hopelessly corrupt. Putting an intellectual in the White House has proved about as practical as putting a Christian in charge of the Catholic Church. Yet Obama is at least sane and (as far as we know) decent in his private affairs. Sanity and decency are not virtues one would automatically assign to any of the republican candidates. You have to fear for the future of the republic. Politically it is ossified. Socially the USA is passing Brazil on its way up out of the third world on its way down into it. Like most heavily militarised third world countries, the only institution left that works properly is the armed forces, and I think history tells us that it is only a matter of time before the lionised generals work out they have nothing to fear from the hopelessly discredited politicians in Washington. Intellectually the country is balkanised. I was reading a book review on Amazon the other day of Adam Hochschild's important book on the Belgian Congo, "King Leopold's Ghost". A review was there from some woman, who said she was enjoying the book until she noticed that all reviews were from liberal publications. She then decided the book was full of dangerous liberal lies, and was racist because it blamed white people. She stopped reading. I am surprised she didn't mention burning it. Her (published!) ignorant review, her poor spelling, her fear of facts that conflicted with her truthiness-informed prejudices - all in all a neat metaphor of the collapse of American democracy.
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