CAMPAIGN
OUTSIDER Super Sunday spills to Super
Tuesday By Muhammad Cohen
HONG KONG - If Republicans are approaching
Super Tuesday with ambivalence, I can empathize,
based on Super Sunday. But take heart, GOPers: as
the game unfolds, you're likely to discover where
your true feelings lie.
I tell people I
have no interest in American professional
football; I'm a New York Jets fan. The Jets have
long, ugly histories with both the New York Giants
and the New England Patriots. It's so bad that
every week, I root for the Jets, whoever's playing
the Giants and whoever's playing the Patriots.
Imagine my dilemma
on Super Sunday, when the
Giants played the Patriots for the championship.
Republicans don't have to imagine. Some
candidates, particularly Iowa caucus winner Mike
Huckabee and Internet fundraising champ Ron Paul,
have passionate followings. Much of the Republican
base, however, has spent a long time rooting
against frontrunners John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Romney, former governor of Massachusetts,
won elections in that liberal state taking
positions that make conservatives' blood boil. He
supported abortion rights and gun controls. He
signed a landmark mandatory health insurance bill
that's the closest existing example of Hillary
Clinton's health plan. Romney has renounced those
positions to run as the true conservative in the
2008 race.
Bile booster Some
Republicans are willing to believe Romney, despite
more faces than a watch shop, since the
alternative is the senior senator from Arizona.
McCain gets true believers' bile rising over his
opposition to President George W Bush's tax cuts
and a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex
marriage, his support for immigration reform,
campaign finance reform, and stem cell research,
and his refusal to kowtow to party extremists.
They're particularly enraged that McCain
reaches across the aisle to work with Democrats.
He's co-sponsored Senate legislation with objects
of right-wing wrath Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy.
Some call McCain a RINO - Republican in name only.
Those qualities would make McCain a more
attractive general election candidate and give him
a better chance of winning the White House, which
only adds to true believers' anguish.
With
Romney, the base likes where he stands but they
don't know if he means it. With McCain, they often
don't like where he stands, but they know he means
it. When all of the votes are counted on Super
Tuesday, it's likely the Republicans will know
where their race stands and can get back to their
more comfortable position of lining up behind a
consensus favorite. It will be fun to watch
whether the Republicans' can win the general
election with a large percentage of the base
holding its noses.
Who is the
enemy? But Super Tuesday won't solve the
Republicans' far more agonizing quandary: which
Democrat should they hope to face in November?
Clinton-bashing has been a favorite
Republican sport since the 1990s, and Hillary has
always been a prime target. They've demonized her
as the ultimate big spending liberal who wants to
reach government's hand more deeply into people's
wallets, classrooms and sickbeds. The hatred has
only deepened since the Republican attack machine
couldn't defeat Bill Clinton in two presidential
elections or stop Hillary from winning two terms
as a senator from New York.
Red-meat
Republicans would never admit it, but the reason
they hate the Clintons so much is probably because
they're so close. Many Democrats criticize the
Clintons as being too Republican rather than too
radical. Bill Clinton reformed the federal welfare
system that was a longstanding object of
Republican wrath. He balanced the federal budget,
even ran a surplus, something Republicans
wistfully lament as an impossible dream.
The Clinton administration struck out on
health care reform and walked away from it. Bill
Clinton gave the Republicans a sex scandal they
could only dream of; it's not the Clintons' fault
that more Republicans than Democrats fell victim
when the morality police moved from the White
House to Capitol Hill.
Moreover,
fire-breathing Republicans and the Clintons are
comfortable with the same kind of politics.
They're happy to wrestle in the mud, thinking they
won if the other side got dirtier. Then everyone
has a shower and a brandy, and they get paid by
all of us to do it again tomorrow.
Base
two calculation The Clintons, like the
Republicans, believe in playing to the base, and
now more than ever, it's evident their base is
Bill and Hillary. Imagine if the former president
had expended a quarter of the energy he's shown
during five weeks of the primary season for the
Democratic presidential candidates in 2000 or
2004. It took two to tango the US into its box of
negative, nasty politics in which candidates
cynically search for slight advantages to reach
50.01% in a country split down the middle; to
answer Senator Barack Obama's debate question, the
Clintons sure can dance.
Obama offers
something completely different, an approach to
politics that's uplifting not depressing. Despite
what his position papers may say - on health care,
for example, Obama's position is closer to the
Republicans than Clinton's - and in his pledge to
reach across the aisle, Obama represents something
dangerous for Republicans. All the candidates are
talking about change: Obama is the one who really
means it. Just in his first Senate term, he's not
(yet, at least) a member of the same club as the
mainstreamers. If Republicans think McCain is too
much of a free thinker, Obama's a real nightmare.
Except, perhaps, at the voting booth. The
Republican attack machine would love a shot at
Obama. He's a mixed race African-American with an
Arabic middle name who attended an Islamic school
in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia.
He's admitted to illegal drug use. His name is
already connected with a big city political
scandal in Chicago. There's no end to Swift
Boating fuel from the Obama well.
That's
the real dilemma for the Republicans. Do they root
for Clinton who they've hated for years and
haven't beaten in four shots, knowing that it's
not the end of the world if she wins again? (Maybe
Republicans will get the House of Representatives
back, like they did in 1994, with a Clinton in the
White House ...) Or do they hope for a shot at
Obama who may be easier to beat, but poses a far
greater danger to change the face of politics?
I won't presume to understand the
Republican mind, but I can tell you how I felt
during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl
between those two teams I love to hate. When the
Patriots scored a touchdown to put them ahead and
preserve their shot at an undefeated season, I
found myself rooting for the Giants.
I've
hated the Giants for longer and find them more
repugnant, but I've learned to live with it and
have survived their two previous Super Bowl wins.
I didn't want to see the Patriots change the face
of football history.
Former broadcast
news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's
story to the world as a US Information Agency
diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air
(www.hongkongonair.com), a
novel set during the 1997 handover about
television news, love, betrayal, high finance and
cheap lingerie.
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Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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