Last Hurrah

To repeat something I mentioned recently, I can’t remember a presidential election that wasn’t being called “the most important in our history.” Count me in on this one. This is the second time in my life that the radical right has made a serious bid for the White House, if you consider Goldwater’s try in 1964 serious. When it comes to pure comedy the current crop may be giving Goldwater’s bunch a run for the money. What makes this one different and more dangerous is the fact that Romney, at this late date, still has a reasonable chance of winning. That’s because more Americans are willing to accept as fact that extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice. This may be OK, but only if we agree on where defense of liberty begins and, more important, where it ends.

This election looked very good for the Republicans on paper. Citizens United, selective voter suppression, public perception of Obama’s handling of the economy and the fact that he is hated by many for reasons not altogether political is a good starting point. They have been engaging in far right rhetoric to accommodate Tea Party types with the expectation of winning. In doing so many of them have publicly taken stands that are against their beliefs, most significant being their candidate for president. If they can’t pull it off this way the Republican establishment, for whose benefit the party is run, will not make this mistake again. What happens next is anybody’s guess. It could be the last hurrah for a marginalized Tea Party with rearrangement of our entire political structure, not necessarily a bad development as I see it.

If Romney is elected it would be only a matter of time for the rabble to realize that there was never anything in it for them. Tea Partiers may learn, too late, who their enemies are. Republicans, through newly elected governors, are now trying to in effect remove poorer voters from the electorate. If they become further empowered I don’t think they’d have qualms about doing the same to former allies, by less subtle means if necessary.

And they might well become necessary. America has never experienced as minuscule a minority ruling class that would be comprised almost completely of beneficiaries of stated Republican intentions. The only way this hegemony could be preserved would require actions never before seen in this country and make us for sure the greatest nation in the world, the Third World.