The return of the right
By Max J. Castro
It was supposed to be the “summer of (economic) recovery.” Instead, it was the summer of reactionary politics.
It has been an excellent few months indeed for the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, with a string of electoral victories by extremist candidates against moderately conservative Republicans. The culmination was the triumph of Tea Partiers Joe Miller in Alaska and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware in primary races for the GOP senatorial nomination in their respective states.
Thus, the celebratory mood last week at the “Values Voter Coalition,” a gathering of leaders of the “moral majority” wing of the Republican right, was no surprise. After all, less than two years ago, the Republicans were defeated and dispirited; the Obama victory and huge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress seemed to presage an era of Democratic/liberal predominance.
Now, as the mid-term elections approach, the Democrats are on the defensive, their majorities in both chamber in peril, and the reelection of Barack Obama in question. Meanwhile, a Republican Party already dominated by the right has been dragged toward the extreme right by the Tea Party. In the process, the Tea Party has injected the GOP with a dose of much needed enthusiasm.
But what explains this reversal of fortune? The Obama campaign represented a sort of lyrical illusion, a moment in which a very diverse coalition, spearheaded by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, came together in a brief spasm of hope behind a young, charismatic candidate who seemed to echo the optimism of an FDR or a JFK.
Beyond the ecstasy of the progressives, who had felt alienated from every president in more than a generation, including Clinton, the consummate corporate Democrat, were some hard realities. Barack Obama was propelled to victory by massive majorities among the black and Latino electorates. Indeed, the majority of whites voted for John McCain. In a country which was founded on the proposition that only white male property holders were entitled to vote — and which ever since has been ruled mostly by members of this demographic group — it is not an exaggeration to say that the victory of Barack Obama came as a profound shock and a deep disappointed to tens of millions of white conservative voters.
After the grief, came the denial, the bitterness and the rage. There are those who to this day question the legitimacy of the Obama presidency itself. The crudest within this group, the so-called “birthers,” claim that Obama was not born in the United States. Their belief is not shaken by definitive evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii. More subtle is the attempt to delegitimize Obama by painting him as, in some way, an outsider, the “Other.”
One of numerous examples is the business magazine Forbes (owned by the right-wing millionaire and former GOP presidential hopeful Steve Forbes), which features as its cover story an error-riddled, insult-laden article by the reactionary pseudo intellectual Dinesh D’Souza. In the lengthy essay, among other nonsense, D’Souza makes this astounding, outlandish claim:
“…our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”
Incredible indeed, and for many reasons beside the fact that Obama’s father abandoned his family when the future President was just two years old. Nonetheless, D’Souza’s absurd thesis was quickly picked up and endorsed by no less than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a presumptive competitor for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
Yet the fact that this laughable attempt at explaining Obama’s mindset and actions, with its racist undertones, would be embraced by the former U.S. Representative from Georgia reflects the depth to which the discourse of the Republicans has sunk. It also says something about Gingrich himself. This is the man who, speaking about the U.S. Civil War, once remarked that if a certain general had adopted different tactics, “we” (the slave-holding South) would have won the war.
Thus, it is no wonder that Gingrich and his Tea Party allies are angry and want “to take their country back.” Take it back from whom? Well, from that tribal Kenyan anticolonial ghost who sits in the White House incarnated as Barack Obama. The extremism (and racism) in the Republican Party may reap it some short electoral benefits in November. One reason is that older, more conservative white voters turn out in much greater percentages than minorities in mid-term elections. Also, too many voters suffer from political amnesia and will blame Obama and the Democrats for the disasters dumped on them by the Bush administration, including two wars, the lingering effects of a near financial meltdown, and a huge deficit borne of enormous tax cuts for the rich and runaway military spending.
Yet the ascendance of the Republican right wing will be short-lived. The party has no answers for the complex problems that afflict American society, at home or abroad. Its electoral base — less educated whites — is shrinking. Demographic change spells doom for a party whose representation in the U.S. Congress could pass for the members of parliament in apartheid-era South Africa. The Tea Party may look like a winner now. Yet its upsurge signals the early death throes of a political party systematically digging its own grave.
