Choices the GOP would rather not make…..
Sarah Palin was unforgettably the Republican Party’s nominee for the Vice presidency in 2008. She was I think only the second woman nominated for the second spot on either party ticket – the first being Democrat Geraldine Ferraro who ran with Walter Mondale in 1984 and sadly died last year aged only 75.
Palin assumed totemic importance as matters turned out not only because she has that odd star-quality the camera loves and makes celebrity but also because she had something to say – which no matter how ill informed, ill-thought through or indeed zany – still spoke through the Media to an ready listening audience. It’s easy to be grand and condescending with those who seem so ill-equipped for high office and Sarah Palin’s preposterous nonsense over Russia and such made it easier but her unease with detail was always trumped by her certainties.
And whether we like this or not it is a fact that Palin’s liked by many simply because she dares to speak what others dare to think and to quietly believe. That their thoughts are often uneducated and based on false premises; or that their beliefs are unscientific; or that their beliefs assert Biblical myths as truths doesn’t matter.
What matters is that these are commonly shared prejudices against the modern world which inform much of the right’s thinking in the United States.
It not un-ironic that a state born in defiance of the religious culture of the European monarchies and utilising the thinking of the scientific philosophy of Newton and Hobbes language of the secular Enlightenment championed by Voltaire and Rousseau – all perhaps brought together in that Renaissance genius of Benjamin Franklin – should end two centuries on in the intellectual fancy of Intelligent Design and the quagmire of creationism over evolutionary theory and modern physics and mathematics.
Their rejection as false the fascinations of our ever widening worlds of knowledge, holding instead to the narrows of biblical literalism is was one of modern Education’s greatest failures…..even though hardly one of those who claim every single word of bible for themselves can speak any of the languages in which these scriptures are actually written. Indeed many of those who espouse the faith of the born again probably think it was written in seventeenth century English and that God Himself , like Shakespeare, speaks in the florid fancies of the King James version.
Governor Palin has made herself a champion of this anti-intellectualism of the most xenophobic of the right wing lingering on the far right side of the GOP. She is a heroine to many parts of the Tea Party movement. And as she speaks others find themselves placed in political jeopardy. Senator Lugar of Indiana, a pillar of the old fashioned right-wing Republican Party, is the latest Republican grandee to find himself assailed from the right.
Only last week he failed to win the votes in the State Convention in Indiana for re-nominating as the Republican candidate for a seventh six year term in the Senate. Not only must he endure a run-off against State Treasurer Richard Mourdock but to add insult to injury the American Action Network ( one of the Republican Super PACs) which had spent half a million dollars supporting Lugar has abruptly withdrawn its support. And now Governor Palin has waded into the fray and thrown her not inconsiderable support behind Mourdock’s campaign.
However it is also whispered that the Republican establishment is worried about a Mourdock victory. The Democrats retained control of the Senate in 2010 despite a Republican wave. It was due in no small part to three Tea Party victories in primaries. Sharron Angle in Nevada snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, going down to a very unpopular Harry Reid. Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell in Delaware first defeated former representative Mike Castle in the primary and secondly turned a certain Republican victory into defeat. She lost to the largely unknown Chris Coons. In Colorado Ken Buck took down the state’s Lieutenant Governor, who was sure to beat appointed Senator Michael Bennet, and thereby gave the Democrats another senate seat.
Suddenly Senator Lugar who is used to having things in Indiana his own way has to find a way to speak to this new right wing on the Republican far right. Robert Schmuhl, a Notre Dame political scientist has commented:
“In the past, Richard Lugar earned the respect of Hoosier voters because he was a reflection of the right-of-centre thinking that defines so many people in the state. But the Republican Party over the past few years has moved much more to the right and away from the territory of consensus, where Lugar worked so long. To a certain extent, he’s yesterday’s Republican at a time when the party seems more interested in confrontation instead of compromise. That’s crucial in understanding the dynamics of the May primary.”
President Obama continues meanwhile to make appearances on TV chat shows and his easy manner is as winning as ever. He was on a CNBC talk show this week in North Carolina. The GOP and Fox news have become exercised by Obama’s deft use his public duties to make what they term blatant campaign stops.But the President sails by these synthetic storms of outrage which only further infuriates his opponents. Even the wider press joke about the number of calls the President has already made to certain toss-up states. When the campaign announced in would be making a formal start in early May the state press in Ohion and Virginia joked:
Ohio and Virginia — he’s back! President Obama and wife Michelle will officially launch the president’s re-election campaign May 5 during Saturday rallies in Columbus and Richmond..
So here we are, months away from either of the Party Conventions and the election campaigns are already running into full throttle. Whether this will impress voters and merely turn them off isn’t certain. As the appetite for more increases amongst the committed the ordinary voter becomes ever more allergically intolerant of neat politics.
But Obama is the master of social politicking and on the stump he sounds like a regular guy who likes beers and sports; he slyly digs at the do-nothing congress and empathises with the voters frustrations and he reminds those in the auto-car industry that they owe their jobs to his billion dollar bail-out – the one Romney opposed.
And this plays well in the rust belt – Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. Only in traditional Indiana does Obama lag and even there as we’ve seen there’s some good news for the Democrats.
Masterful to watch… the GOP staffers watch frustrated for Obama’s ease before the camera and on the stump neatly counterpoints the weaknesses of stiff, awkward Romney. And this remains the Governor’s ultimate challenge – how to appear to be at home and relaxed with ordinary folks.
Meanwhile the Christian right in the southern states are also dividing into those groups who will nod and wink at Mormons as Christians by default and those evangelicals who think the Church of Latter Day Saints is a dangerous sect. This is another battle Romney needs to win. And it’s a battle that speaks to the uglier side of religious prejudices in the USA.
The Primary season may have ended early but it is far from clear whether the Tea Party and those on the far right still think it’s open season on the Republican establishment.Romney was undoubtedly the strongest candidate from the mainstream but he is being pulled to the right by a GOP that is caught up in a cultural revolution of its own making. And so the choice of Vice President looms ever larger.
John Adams said on being elected to be the Vice Presidency:
“My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
It will nevertheless contrive to test Romney’s imagination and will tell us more about the true nature of his candidacy than the candidate has yet found words to cogently express.