Republican primaries are building up in savageness. To-be-candidates tirelessly trample each other in the mud. “Bad rep jacket war” here is not for the faint-hearted. Any careless word said a decade ago may bury a politician’s career today. Specially trained people from the election staffs put their backs into these “excavations” and they’re definitely worth their salt.
Las Vegas debates
In the end of October American gambling capital hosted the open debates of the key GOP contenders for the U.S. presidency. Rick Santorium, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann took part in them.
Texas governor Rick Perry is going through some tough times after shiny start. Recently he has been demonstrating uncouth ignorance regarding everything that happened outside of his state. Perry’s ratings are permanently falling and today hardly make 10%. According to analysts, his campaign is on the decline and the only option he has is to withdraw from the fight.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is still one of the favorites, although Republican voters start comprehending that his economic program doesn’t guarantee a successful fight against crisis, which was one of Romney’s pros. His main rival is Herman Cain — black conservative, former CEO of a major pizza-producing company. Cain may boast of high ratings in the internal Republican polls thanks to his confessions that doesn’t know a thing about foreign policy “and will only learn the names of Kazakhstan, blah-blah-blah-kistan and blah-blah-blah-stan Presidents when he becomes a President himself”. On the other hand he claims without false modesty that he knows precisely what to do in order to drag America out of crisis and plenty of Republicans believe him.
According to American observers, Las Vegas turned out the most savage fight between Republican politicians. Here are the most dramatic points of the “battle of titans”.
1. Rick Perry accuses Mitt Romney of hiring illegal immigrants as servants. When Romney objects, Perry interrupts him and Romney has to appeal to the debate moderator for help. Then he addresses Perry saying: “Rick, your greatest problem is that you don’t let your opponent finish his thought”. This is a very aggressive discussion for American political culture (I wish they saw Zhirinovsky, though).
2. Perry, parishioner of the Methodist Church, had to explain the statement of his pastor Robert Jeffress, who has introduced Perry as a true Christian, dubbing the Mormons (whom Mitt Romney belongs to) a sect. Romney responded that the founding fathers of America didn’t wanted people to be elected to the public posts according to their faith.
3. Congresswoman Michelle Bachman has recently been in the lead of the race, yet now she has to fight for staying on the roll at all. She has distinguished herself during these debates, addressing American mothers with a call “not to give up and fight the banks, attempting to rob you of the mortgaged houses”. “President Obama has let down, but I won’t” — Bachman shouted to the cameras.
4. While debating over the foreign-policy matters Bachmann accused Cain of naivety. She grounded this accusation on the former restaurant keeper’s reply to the CNN interviewer that if he was elected, he would’ve pondered over exchanging the Guantanamo prisoners for Al-Qaida hostages, comparing it to the Palestinian prisoners exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. At that, judging from the standpoint of American voters, he drew an utmost unfortunate parallel, dubbing the prisoners, contained at American military base, “hostages”.
5. Rick Perry offered the USA to stop funding the UN. This is the same old sing and dance that the American right-wing isolationists like to perform, believing that the USA will be better off once it withdraws from the organization. This would automatically mean the death of this organization, as long as a quarter of it is funded from the pockets of American taxpayers.
According to CNN, after the Las Vegas debates, 30 % of Republicans are going to vote for Romney, 26 % — for Cain. Perry may reckon merely 13 %, Ron Paul — 10 %, and the rest may have 1 to 5 %. Formally the GOP primaries are to start in January of 2012, but the actual date hasn’t been specified yet. Several states have already started to squabble for the right to be the first one to host this attractive political show, bringing quite palpable profits to the hosting cities, though.
Cain’s compromise
“Bad rep jacket war” here is not for the faint-hearted. Any careless word said a decade ago may bury a politician’s career today. Specially trained people from the election staffs put their backs into these “excavations” and they’re definitely worth their salt. The newcomers, who haven’t been durability-tested during the previous political battles, are especially subjected to this danger. Herman Cain hasn’t avoided this lot either.
Spinmeisters of his main rival Mitt Romney have “dug” quite a heap of dirt on him. Beginning of November, i.e. the break after the Las Vegas debates, where he got the hold of the second place (right after Mitt Romney) and with a diminutive gap, indeed, turned a truly hell for him. Popular web-site POLITICO has published a voluminous and detailed article about the “tough 90s” in the USA, when Cain headed a lobbyist department of the restaurant keepers association. Two female employees of his used to accuse him of sexual harassment then. The case was settled before the court and both of them have resigned large indemnification payments. POLITICO has informed Cain’s staff of this material prior to publishing it, giving him a 10 day start to disprove it.
Due to some vague reasons, Cain’s staff has taken no advantage of this courtesy. Instead they’ve attacked the entire media sphere of groundless jabs. Cain’s reaction to the accusations was utterly helpless and feeble. Changing his versions with each passing day he was mumbling things like “I don’t remember”, “There was something like that” and “There were many absurd claims”. In politics reaction to the event is often more important than the event itself. Cain has demonstrated his inability to act in the crisis situations and this may have disastrous consequences for his campaign.
Meanwhile, amateurishness of Cain and his staff has been undermining the pillars of his reputation furthermore. Several TV-channels have aired the footage of Mark Block, Cain’s Chief of Staff, smoking a cigarette and puffing the rings of smoke. Indignant fighters for healthy life-style reinforced by numerous units of satirists and comic writers have literally destroyed Cain and he had to embarrassingly explain that this was an accident, that he’s a decisive non-smoker and that the youth shouldn’t stick to this bad habit. The tobacco-and-sex scandals haven’t even settled yet, when Herman Cain claimed that once he enters the White House, he would equip the fence at the Mexican border with a barbed wire, connected to a high voltage generator, triggering yet another wave of public discontent and the need to make excuses for a lame joke.
Information killers showed no mercy to the main brainchild of Cain — his tax reform — either. The 9-9-9 plan of changing the U.S. tax system, which sounded great on paper — equal 9 % taxation of companies, individuals and the sales tax— was represented as a soap bubble. Economists criticize Cain, claiming that this system will favor the rich, while poor would have to pay less. And don’t forget that the amendments to the U.S. Constitution will be required to bring the remarkable Cain’s offer into life.
Mitt Romney: candidate without a program
The unchallenged GOP favorite in this race — Mitt Romney — owes his popularity to two circumstances:
1. An experience of governing a major state (Massachusetts) and administering the major business-projects.
2. Total lack of program. His staff surely prepares his statements on the policy issues according to the public opinion polls and fresh news. For example, if something has burnt somewhere, he states that the fire precautions are to be improved.
There are two kinds of politicians in fact. The first ones (Pragmatics) offer an election program, based upon public demands, thus, following their nation. The second ones (Messiahs) lead the nations, offering it new options and new development paths. Current U.S. President Barack Obama is a vivid example of the second kind.
Yet, no political behavior pattern may exist per se. Obama’s example has made a vivid example of that. Having won the elections thanks to his sloganeering, he now has to rule according to the voters’ opinion and adjusting his policy statements in compliance with the polls. For now Romney show a complete lack of ideology, grounding upon a solid strategy alone — the one fully expressed with a phrase from the ads: “Any whim for your votes”. His political flexibility has alienated Tea Party adherents (the most conservative part of GOP voters) from him.
For now there’s no sight of brighter star on the GOP political horizon. Thus Republicans will surely have to choose from Romney and Cain.
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