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opinionAlso in this section:
Bernal, Martín's "Fifth Bench" throne room Syracuse, High profile political murders in Guatemala Jackson, Mitt Romney leads GOP candidate fundraising Sirias, A painful plunge back into English
Mitt Romney leading the GOP pack? by Eric Jackson It's my hope and expectation that the race for the 2008 Republican nomination will be beside the point, that the Democrats will take back the White House. Ah, but the United States has a two-party system and as Latin Americans sometimes say, 'if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.' Next year's elections are far from sewn up and the quickest route to a Democratic defeat would be to act as is they were. (Let me not completely discount the third parties. As a practical matter none of them will win the presidency or come close to doing so, but at The Panama News we have for months now been getting press releases from Daniel Imperato, the self-described "hard liner" on personal freedom issues who's aiming to be the Libertarian Party's standard bearer. The Republicans should be very afraid of Mr. Imperato or whoever the eventual Libertarian nominee turns out to be, especially if they swing to the religious right this time. If the US electorate ends up as closely divided as it was in 2000 and 2004, the Libertarians could very well be the spoilers for the GOP.) On both sides, the big news was the release of fundraising reports for the first 90 days of the 2008 election cycle. On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton demonstrated her strong financial backing, but with Obama nearly matching her and John Edwards and Bill Richardson also doing well enough maintain their viability. The reports slow down any primary bandwagon effect by effectively raising doubts about the inevitability of a Clinton nomination. The big news, however, was on the Republican side. Yes, we know that there is a huge pack of hopefuls there. We also thought we knew, from polls and endorsements and news coverage, that the front runners are Senator John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. But surprise, surprise --- when the fundraising reports came out McCain was in third place and Giuliani in second, with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the lead. Romney was the Republican governor of an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and has shown himself adept at taking on moderate coloration in such circumstances. The son of an auto exec turned politician, he showed his prowess at fundraising among corporate types after taking over the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in the wake of a scandal. Romney's also a Mormon who appeals to a lot of the religious right, even if many Christians consider the Latter Day Saints a cult of heretics. But then, for all their doctrinaire Biblical posturing, the Republicans have had no problem aligning themselves with Washington Times publisher and weirdo cult leader Sun Myung Moon, whose Moonie followers worship him as a physical incarnation of God. McCain has been trying to mend fences with the likes of Jerry Falwell, and we already know that this has blunted some of his appeal to Democrats but don't yet know whether it has brought many born agains into his camp. From the fundraising reports it appears that it has not. The religious right is big into the chicken hawk thing, and in the 2000 primaries trashed former Vietnam POW McCain's war record, just as they smeared maimed veteran Max Cleland in the 2002 Senate race and decorated veteran John Kerry in the last presidential campaign. I don't think this works this time for a Republican Party that led America to war for a lie, then lost that war, and which now seems intent on cheating the wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of the benefits they are owed. McCain and Giuliani are identified with the Iraq War and if nominated would taste at least a little of the bitter wrath of a country deeply offended by its conduct and disappointed by its results. They might get away with saying that Bush ran things badly and they'd do better, but Romney, who has not been identified with the war, would be in a much better position to get away with making vague promises to sort out the mess. If Romney can get the activists of the religious right behind him without making a big public deal about how he's anti-abortion and also opposed to any rights for homosexuals, then his ability to fundraise among the corporate elites and the fact that he wasn't in a federal office when Congress had to vote for or against the Iraq War would allow him to present himself as the moderate technocrat whose main priority is to put America's economy in order. In that case he would not be an easy opponent for the Democrats --- especially with the slanderers, racists and sexists of the far right doing their knife work by way of Internet chain mail slurs, independent committees and Fox News, and the candidate's official campaign disavowing the worst of all that. On the Democratic side, there is much speculation, some of it ghoulish, about the viability of the John Edwards campaign in light of his wife's illness. That factor has pluses and minuses that ought to cancel each other out, to the extent that I still expect that being a successful lawyer would be the biggest negative for Edwards to overcome. But if the Republicans go with Romney and the Democrats pick Edwards, then the role that corporations have been playing in American life would come front and center in the 2008 campaign and Romney would be in big trouble. Hillary's success at fundraising and the stands she took way back when she was trying to put together a national health care plan raise questions about whether she is willing or able to confront the financial powerhouses who have exported most of America's industry. What Obama and Richardson have to say about that subject is still largely unknown to the American people. If Al Gore jumps in he'd have certain strengths, but his patrician background and past support for globalization on corporate terms would make him less effective in a campaign about the power and abuses of big companies than Edwards would be. It's fashionable to say that in the Democratic Party, and more recently in the GOP, the race for the nomination emphasizes the power of the extremes who account for many of the parties' respective campaign foot soldiers and larger parts of the primary and caucus electorates than of the country at large. But before the primaries and caucuses begin the races are winnowed down not by the activists but by the rich. There ought to be a better way but I don't think there will be anytime soon. So does Romney's fundraising prowess indicate that the corporate elitists are afraid of McCain, who's the Teddy Roosevelt Republican of our times? Does it mean that the GOP powerbrokers are wary of Giuliani over lifestyle issues? And is the Romney fundraising feat still so indecisive as to leave an opening for Newt Gingrich to jump into the race? Time will tell, but if you are an American voter, in the USA or abroad, the time is fast approaching to make up your mind about a favorite for the nomination. By the time that the primary and caucus voting begins, the money and organizations needed to run a winnning race will be in place and those without them will be also-rans. However, I think the urgency is greater on the Republican side. Both sides have crowded fields of hopefuls with diverse talents, and it may just be my Democratic conceit to believe that my party has a much deeper lineup of candidates who would be good campaigners and good presidents. The thing is, the tide of public opinion is running against the Iraq War and the GOP that led the country into it, and it would seem that the Republicans need an unusual candidate who can swim against strong currents to have any hope at all in November of 2008. Might that be Mitt Romney, who was the Republican governor of the heavily Democratic Massachusetts?
Also in this section:
Bernal, Martín's "Fifth Bench" throne room Syracuse, High profile political murders in Guatemala Jackson, Mitt Romney leads GOP candidate fundraising Sirias, A painful plunge back into English
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