DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Tea Party hijacks Romney and the
presidential race By Dinesh
Sharma
Mitt Romney, the presumptive
nominee for the Republican Party ticket, has
picked Paul Ryan, a seven-term congressman from
Wisconsin, to be his running mate in this year's
US presidential election. It resulted in waves of
elation among the Tea Party and conservative
Republicans, as it pushed Romney further toward
the right wing of his party and away from the
moderate center.
It has in effect reduced
the former chief executive officer of Bain
Capital, former governor of Massachusetts and CEO
of the Utah
Olympics to the titular head
of a party that is controlled by narrow political
interests and big corporate donors.
This
is clearly the most populist US election we have
seen in recent years. Both sides are appealing to
a class-based economic message to arouse voters.
It may be a bold move on Romney's part to pick
Ryan, who is known as the deficit hawk, or it
could backfire. It will take several weeks to know
for sure whether the Romney-Ryan ticket can
actually take on the now-formidable Barack
Obama-Joe Biden ticket.
The mathematics of
different voter segments - women,
Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans, LGBT - may
support President Obama at this point in key
states, but we still have 85 days in the campaign:
The nominations and debates have not yet taken
place. The dynamics of the race might change.
However, the precious summer months have given
Romney none or very little edge in the race.
Still,
by making a purely economic argument about the
deficit and federal budget with the Paul Ryan
pick, Romney and his team may have figured out
that they cannot win on any of the hot-button
cultural issues. For instance, on the gender
issue, including reproductive health and the
women's vote, Romney has been behind in the polls.
On the issue of changing demographics,
ethnicity and immigration, Romney has not been
able to catch up with Obama. Thus in reaching out
for Ryan over Chris Christie, Rob Portman, Bobby
Jindal or Tim Pawlenty, Romney's team has decided
that the spirit of compromise on the budget and
deficit as outlined in the Simpson-Bowles plan is
not a winning strategy. Other candidates clearly
have much more executive experience than Ryan, who
has been in government all his professional life.
Throughout the summer, Romney has been
trailing in the polls, although it has been within
the statistical margin of error. He has suffered
the summer doldrums that visited John Kerry in
2004 and Mike Dukakis in 1988; Kerry was
"Swift-boated", Dukakis was "Willie Hortonized",
and Romney has been "Bained".
Now with
Ryan on the ticket, will Romney stand to lose
elderly voters too? Seniors and members of the
retirees' interest group AARP might turn because
of threats to Medicare posed by Romney-Ryan
ticket. Will they gain enough younger voters to
make up the difference?
Ryan is a follower
of Ayn Rand and has suggested cutting Medicare
funds for seniors and Pell Grants for college and
university students. He wants to raise taxes on
the middle class and give tax breaks to the
wealthy. Finally, he believes social security is a
"Ponzi scheme". Ryan's conservative-ideology score
is even higher than former vice-president Dick
Cheney's (+0.562 vs +0.531), and he is a darling
of the Tea Party.
Romney's timing is
interesting. He made his choice public potentially
to change the conversation and try to recover some
momentum lost during his trip to Britain and
Israel. His approval ratings have remained
stagnant, while Obama seems to have inched ahead
by a few points. On the heels of his lackluster
foreign-policy trip, Romney has picked a VP
candidate who has limited foreign-policy
experience.
Conservative pundits are happy
with Romney's choice, seeing it as doubling down
on Obama's perceived failures on the economy. But
it appears from an international and global
perspective that Romney is, rather, dumbing down
the US political process and debate by focusing
too narrowly on domestic interests within "the
echo chamber". Romney has been co-opted,
compromised and shrunk by the long-drawn-out
primaries and the general election debate within
his own party, which now makes him vulnerable to
the Democrats.
When you write a political
biography titled No Apology, it suggests to
your readers that you're somehow forced to
apologize for your "incredible success" or you
feel the compulsion to be apologetic but you're
defying it. To be apologetic is a very un-American
attitude which apparently President Obama displays
to foreign leaders, assert Romney supporters.
Ryan does have strong views on American
exceptionalism, China and a range of other issues
that directly impact America's competitiveness. In
a speech delivered at the Alexander Hamilton
Society last year, Ryan rejected isolationism and
made a case for strong American presence around
the world, arguing that a world without Pax
Americana would be a chaotic place. He believes
that American decline is not necessarily
predetermined.
Ryan is in favor of
building up defense spending and suggests that
international-affairs and aid budgets need to be
cut instead. He created a controversy by
suggesting that the generals were not providing
realistic estimates on defense spending: "We don't
think the generals are giving us their true
advice", he said about the military budget.
Ryan has been less hawkish than Romney on
China and the rest of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India and South Africa), proposing to work with
them and to foster strong alliances toward common
democratic ideals. He has expressed the same views
vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and the Arab
Spring. Foreign Policy magazine has said: "Ryan's
world view, in other words, appears to be a bit of
a Rorschach test. And in a general election where
appealing solely to the Republican base just won't
cut it, that might be exactly what Romney needs."
While the last election was about
America's large footprint in the world - two long
wars and the multiplying effect of Bush fatigue -
this election has magnified America's economic
troubles at the expense of a long historical view
on the global challenges the nation is facing.
Romney, who has the know-how and the
requisite skills to lead the country in a bold
manner, could have taken an expansive,
internationalist, free-trade strategy by
suggesting that Republicans think long and hard
about "the American dream", but instead he seems
to have settled on a short pass or a handoff
toward the end-zone for a tactical gain. Whether
it will deliver a victory in November is not
clear.
Democrats could not be more pleased
with the Republican choice. Obama's senior
campaign strategist David Axelrod immediately
informed supporters by e-mail: "In Ryan, Romney
has selected a running mate best known for
designing the extreme [Republican] budget that
would end Medicare as we know it, and - just like
Romney's plan - actually raise taxes on
middle-class Americans to pay for an additional
$250,000 tax break for millionaires and
billionaires.
"As a leader of the House
Republicans and a Tea Party favorite, Congressman
Ryan has led the relentless, intensely ideological
battle for these kinds of budget-busting policies
that punish seniors and the middle class."
In selecting a "young gun" as a running
mate - who displays passion, conviction and a
loyal following - Romney seems to have conceded to
his harshest conservative critics, who insist that
he lacks the backbone or the key attributes to
excite the base of his own party. Romney may have
silenced his critics, but will the Romney-Ryan
ticket draw enough independents, newcomers and
younger voters to guarantee a win in November?
This seems a highly risky strategy.
It may
simply turn out that the Tea Party, now in effect
represented by Ryan, has hijacked Romney and the
race, taking middle America on a thrill-seeking
ride for the next three months.
Dinesh Sharma is the author of
Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The
Making of a Global President, which was rated
as one of the Top 10 black history books for 2012.
His next book on Obama, Crossroads of
Leadership: Globalization and American
Exceptionalism in the Obama Presidency, is due
to be published with Routledge Press.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
