Dazed & Confused

Prior to the US Presidential election last week, columnist and libertarian Deroy Murdoch said,

"It's vital that this be not just a slight GOP win, but a crushing defeat for Obama...We need to discredit and destroy socialism in the US for at least a generation"

Days after the US Presidential election, conservative voters, libertarians, Tea Partiers, and Christian evangelicals are still dazed. Barack Obama was never supposed to win a second term. The result is, for them, sincerely unexpected. The only outcome for which they were prepared included a calmly confident President-Elect Mitt Romney. It's fair to say that the conservative side of American politics was both unprepared for another term with President Obama, and not expecting to have to face it.

Sad faces

It's always hard to be a loser, harder still to do it with an audience. Mitt Romney admitted that he had not written a concession speech. Romney's team went live with a President-Elect website. Republican talking head Karl Rove refused to accept the loss of Ohio and sent Fox News Host Megyn Kelly on a long-legged trek to find the psephologists' bunker. Such was the rock solid belief that Romney would win, it appears that Fox's election night hosts hadn't considered any other result.

Out here in the blogosphere, the sense of shock was less polished but no less vehement. Right wing forum Godlike Productions posted this gem:

Dick Morris was wrong

"I'm not arguing that Romney was a great candidate -- but up against the Worst President In The History Of The United States, The Kenyan Marxist Muslim, The Socialist Redistributor Barack Obama, a tree stump could have won."

Robert Bowen wrote for The Examiner on November 12.

"There are several things to take from this. First, Romney had coat tails—for Democrats. Secondly, the Republican brand is severely damaged by its war on women, its immigrant bashing, and its obstruction in Congress. This damaged down ticket candidates. Lastly, the pick ups in the West show the changing demographic. Hispanic voters shocked Republican know-it-alls and old school pollsters by turning out to vote. Republicans totally underestimated that. They also underestimated the turn out by African-Americans and young people.

If the Republican Party will even survive, it needs to do some soul searching about its policies. Right now, many GOP pundits are saying their policies are fine, they just did not make their case “delicately.” Is there a more delicate way to say “self-deportation” “legitimate rape”, or forced trans-vaginal ultra sounds? I suspect Republicans still do not get it."

I fear the reality is worse than Bowen suspects, and the Republicans simply won't acknowledge it until it’s all too late. Bear in mind that these terms "right" and "left" are literally relative. Both Democrats and Republicans are significantly to the right of centre, and that's part of a bigger problem for Republicans and Tea Partiers.

One of a series of aggressive tweets which Donald Trump later deleted.

Another four years with President Obama will renew the Tea Party's energy; he's someone to rail against, someone to hate, someone to fear. He’s black, with a foreign/Muslim middle name. He’s an easy target. Donald Trump will continue to suggest that President Obama is somehow an illegitimate president. Rush Limbaugh's face will get redder and shinier, Greta Van Susteran will grit her teeth even tighter, and Glen Beck will howl tears of rage.
Still, few Republicans are accepting that conservative voters have also changed. What was conservative twenty years ago is now mainstream, and the ignorance and prejudices that were silently accepted then are now cause for revolt. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly read the electorate well on election night:

“The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming, black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

“The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore.”

It's difficult to define a "traditional" America on the basis of voter preferences in a country where voting is not compulsory, but it is safe to say that the groups which were once considered to be minorities and special interest groups won the election for President Obama. Despite recent economic history, and warnings of a financial cliff heading their way, the more economically and/or socially vulnerable groups - single women, the poor, African Americans, Latino, gay - voted overwhelmingly in favour of the party most likely to look after their needs.
The biggest block of voters to support President Obama was women. This is hardly surprising, given that Mitt Romney’s party was better known for it’s serial ignorance on a range of issues, including pregnancy, rape, abortion and climate change. These are not “Womens’ Issues” – they are human issues. (see left)

These are the issues which will ultimately split conservative politics in America.

The core values of the Republican party are being challenged by America’s changing demography. Much of mainstream America is rejecting the extreme brand of conservatism favoured by the Tea Party, so moving to the right to embrace the Tea Party won’t win Republicans more votes; it will probably cost some in the middle. Shuffling to the left is even more dangerous, because it makes it impossible to be an effective opposition – they would agree with too many Democratic policies and end up opposing them just to be seen to be opposing them. If Republicans were willing to move to the left far enough to alienate the Tea Party faithful, they would lose enough of their base to make winning a Presidential almost impossible.

So where to now for the GOP? Deroy Murdoch wanted to see the Democrats made irrelevant for a generation. It looks far more like the Republicans are the ones who are endangered, a victim of their own conservatism.

Americana: Isaac the Angry Uterus

It’s official. Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee in the 2012 American Presidential election. It’s been unofficial for some months now, with names like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Thaddeus McCotter, plus token female Michelle Bachmann and token African American Herman Cain all being relegated to the ranks of politicians who didn’t quite make it into the Presidential Race.

Those of us who ignore the mental health advice and watch eleventeen hours of subscription television news each day are only too aware of the Presidential election. For some of us, it’s a perfectly alluring blend of drama, comedy and cut-throat competitive action. No, I’m not being flippant about that; following a Presidential election can be the world’s greatest spectator sport.

Like all spectator sports, you need to be familiar with the rules, understand the language of the commentary team and know the candidates. Unfortunately, you can’t learn everything you need to know from The West Wing boxed set (although it’s a decent place to start, or a terrific refresher course.)

As in the Australian system, there are two major parties. One is to the right of centre; the other is a fair bit further to the right of centre. The incumbent is President Barack Obama, a Democrat, which is the least extreme of the two parties and is symbolised by a donkey. The Democrats are roughly equivalent to the ALP. The more extreme conservative party is the Republication party. They’re known as the Grand Old Party, or GOP, which is roughly equivalent to the Coalition, but with a bit more extreme.


President Obama was elected President four years ago, just about the time the Global Financial Crisis was rewriting the rulebook for the world. His job, to rebuild America’s economy and reputation while fighting the unwinnable war in Afghanistan, was next to impossible, and many Americans see his progress as disappointing. President Obama is phenomenally popular…in Australia, but we’re not allowed to vote. Go figure. His running mate, who will be Vice President if he wins, is the incumbent VP Joe Biden.

Governor Mitt Romney of the Great State of Massachusetts is an entirely different can of tuna. He and Mrs Ann Romney are the Senior Ken and Barbie of American politics. Mitt is independently wealthy, but we’re not quite sure how much moolah he has because he’s hiding his tax returns, but his estimated worth is around $200 million dollars. He has Masters in Business and Law. The Romneys have five sons, all adults. Mitt and his family are practising Mormons. Romney’s Running Mate is Paul Ryan, an even more conservative Republican.

American politics is more conservative than Australian politics, and that could be the problem for the Republicans. How conservative is enough, how much is too much? The spectrum is not infinite, and eventually, the Republicans will move so far to the right that they’ll run out of room to move.

Since Obama’s election four years ago, we’ve seen what can happen when the far right wing of America’s populace get together to oppose the “radical” left. They have a Tea Party, backed by a “fair and balanced” television cable news network. For hard-line Tea Partiers, the standard Republican platform is not conservative enough, but thankfully, the impact of the Tea Party peaked early, fuelled by rage at President Obama’s very existence and egged on by Sarah Palin and the entire Fox News Network: he’s African American, intellectual, and according to Tea Partiers, he’s also possibly Muslim, Kenyan, Indonesian, Alien, Socialist, Communist, Elitist, progressive, Satanist and The End Of Life As We Know It.

A selection of banners from Tea Party rallies during the past four years.

In 2012, the Tea Party is largely without influence, but they are still an important block of voters. There’s no chance that the Tea Party fringe would ever vote for a Democrat; the danger is that if Mitt Romney is seen as too moderate, they might not vote at all. Voting is not compulsory in America: to require someone to vote is an affront to their right to choose not to vote. It’s logical, if your mind is bendy. The bottom line is that Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan have to find the balance between being conservative enough to attract Tea Partiers to the polls, yet not too extreme to keep that true moderate Republicans away from the polls – or worse, voting for Obama.

After the GOP Convention in Tampa this week, we’ll have a better idea of where that sweet spot might be – because Fox News will tell us. It’s early days, yet we can be sure that from the safety of our Australian lounge rooms, much of it will sound ridiculous:

"Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend." —GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to a heckler at the Iowa State Fair who suggested that taxes should be raised on corporations as part of balancing the budget, Aug. 11, 2011

"[My wife] drives a couple of Cadillacs." –Mitt Romney, campaigning for president in Michigan (February 2012)

"I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love." –Mitt Romney (January 2012)

"We have a president, who I think is is a nice guy, but he spent too much time at Harvard, perhaps." —Mitt Romney, who has two Harvard degrees (April 5, 2012)

"I'm not familiar precisely with what I said, but I'll stand by what I said, whatever it was." —Mitt Romney (May 17, 2012)

Still, it could be worse. Todd Akin, a Senator from Wisconsin. All but the most moderate of Republicans are “Pro-Life”, which actually means they are against abortion. The further to the right you move, the less wiggle room there is in the argument. Senator Akin was asked whether women who were pregnant as the result of being raped should have access to legal abortions. Here’s his answer:

“Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.” – Senator Todd Akin (August 2012)

As well has being factually wrong, it’s also grossly insulting to all women. In fact, some American commentators have referred to a Republican “War On Women”, an emotive catchall phrase to describe various unrelated policies that all seem to restrict the rights of women. These include funding cuts for organisations that perform medical abortions, victim support for women who’ve been physically, mentally or sexually abused. Related issues include workplace discrimination, equal pay for women, public funding for family planning, contraception and sterilization.

Of course, the Republicans have no problem with women. They chose Sarah Palin – a “hockey mom” who served half a term as the Governor of a minor state - as the Vice Presidential candidate just four years ago. Perhaps they’ve learnt something since then. Michelle Bachmann was a nominee to be the Republican candidate to run against President Obama. She dropped out of the race early on, but she left her mark on the political landscape.

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending." —Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, suggesting at a presidential campaign event in Florida that the 2011 East Coast earthquake and hurricane was a message from God (Aug. 2011)



Hurricane Isaac: The Uterus of Wrath



Does anyone want to guess at what Michelle Bachmann thinks God’s message must be this week? He’s sent a giant hurricane shaped like a uterus to rain on Tampa during the Republican National Convention. Could it just be that the Republicans need to adjust their attitude to women?