On 6 November 2012, just a year from now, Americans will troop to the polls to cast their ballots in an extremely important general election. While all votes involving the selection of America’s President are considered vital for the future of the United States, this time America truly stands at a crossroads. In 2012 American voters will not only be choosing who the next President will be, they will also be making a decision about what they want their government to be.
After surveying the field of Republican Presidential candidates and their positions on a range of domestic and foreign policy issues, it is very apparent that regardless of who eventually emerges as the GOP’s nominee, Americans will still have a clear choice between a backward-looking Republican backed by an assortment of right-wing political ideologues, or a more forward-looking Democratic President with a centrist legislative agenda.
But what makes the 2012 election even more significant is what the American voters’ choices will say about the government’s role in stimulating the economy, as well as its role in providing for and protecting the needs of American citizens. That’s because the positions of the Republican candidates reflect the narrow interests of Tea Party activists, evangelical Christians and other special interest groups.
The Tea Partiers claim that the solution for America’s economic ills is to eliminate the federal budget deficit by cutting spending, but they also refuse to countenance tax increases of any kind. However, most of the anti-tax Tea Partiers also don’t want cuts in their Social Security and Medicare benefits, which together account for roughly 50 per cent of all government spending. Furthermore, the majority want no cuts in America’s defence spending, which comprises another 25 per cent of the budget.
The fact that no reputable economists agree with the Tea Party spending-cut philosophy is beside the point. Tea Partiers are wedded to their angry fantasy that federal government spending is the problem, and that cutting both spending and taxes is the solution. As a result, rather than risk the ire of these anti-tax extremists, all of the Republican presidential candidates have now adopted the Tea Party’s hardline stance and none will even agree to a compromise, such as $1 in tax increases for every $9 in spending cuts.
The Republican candidates must also appease socially conservative white evangelical Christians, many of whom were hoping Sarah Palin would run for President. Given their equally rigid anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage and anti-immigration positions, it should come as no surprise that many of these so called ‘Christian values’ voters are also supporters of the rigidly anti-tax, anti-government spending Tea Party movement.
However, something the Tea Party and evangelical Christian movements don’t like to acknowledge is the extent to which they both rely on support and funding from corporate special interest groups to spread their antagonistic and ideologically extreme messages.
Fox News supports them with in kind donations of media publicity, and Rupert Murdoch then reaps profits from advertisers, using Fox employees like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to hawk gold and books that are aimed at this segment of the American public.
But the ultimate symbol of right-wing hypocrisy rests in the billionaire Koch brothers, notorious for their funding and sponsorship of groups such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works that also train Tea Party activists and provide funding for the Republican candidates they support. These organisations support the Koch brothers’ opposition to an extension of unemployment benefits and federal regulation of the oil, finance, food and drug industries, but then ignore the fact that the Koch brothers’ companies also head the list of America’s biggest corporate beneficiaries of federal tax breaks for the oil and agriculture industries.
I will discuss the effect they have had on the field of Republican presidential candidates next time.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in International Relations and lectures on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU
