Mitt Romney took a hardball foreign-policy stance. He has already claimed the “perishing Russia” to be American enemy #1, has called to toughen up the political interaction with Iran, the DPRK and other “outcast states” (as they are known in Washington). According to Romney, Obama is too indecisive when it comes to foreign policy — a quality that does not befit the leader of such a great power as the USA — and basically just a naïve simpleton, double-crossed by crafty Russians and Chinese.
Republican primaries have predictably ended with Mitt Romney’s victory. His last rival — Rick Santorum — withdrew himself from the race, leaving Republicans with almost no chances. From the formal standpoint, though, there still are two more candidates — Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul — although they have little chances to become the GOP nominees. Thus, from now on the intrigue of pre-election campaign will be unfolded around the stand between Obama and Romney. However, Obama has a rock-steady support of the entire Democratic apparatus — a benefit that Romney cannot boast of. Therefore, the candidates’ positions at the starting grid are somewhat different.
Obama had a tactical advantage over any Republican candidate from the very beginning. Four months of Republican primaries, which, in strict accordance with American political traditions, have turned into a public laundry of the candidates’ grimy linen, fed Obama’s pre-election staff with plenty of facts to ponder upon. Duel — and the upcoming election fight for Oval Office will be no less than that, so prepare yourselves — started the very day Rick Santorum announced his decision to leave the election race. That Tuesday, Apr 10, Obama’s staff claimed that Romney represents the American upper crust, indifferent to the needs of poorer strata and the middle class. Romney’s rivals and party associates have already taken advantage of this reason, caused by mumbled remarks of Romney himself during the primaries. Obama, though, is neither Santorum, nor Gingrich. The very next day President Obama called for immediate adoption of the so-called Buffet Act, according to which, all Americans making over 1 million dollars a year would have to give away at least 30% of it in taxes. The Act was named after Warren Buffet, famous American investor and billionaire, who instigated the tax increase for the rich. In the USA (and in Russia as well) a separate rate is applied to dividend tax, i.e. the tax for any kind of income that shareholders of any company get from their equities or the share of authorized capital stock. Buffet considered it unfair that his tax rate is lower than the one of his secretary. In the United States this rate makes 15%. Here’s what President Obama said on the subject: “If we want our economy developing and competitive, we cannot afford losing taxes from the rich, who do not need those benefits, and which they don’t even ask for. It is not about redistributing wealth — merely restoring the justice and replenishing state budget”.
Mitt Romney, sitting on top of his $250 million capital and repeatedly accused of paying too little taxes by his party associates, has befallen an easy victim to Obama’s staff. Hair-splitting Republican rivals of the former Massachusetts governor have calculated that in 2011 he paid his taxes at the 14% rate, while the upper limit of progressive income tax (and hardly a single person in the USA doubts that Romney is subjected to it) makes up 39.6%. Thus, we know the exact addressee of Obama’s tax initiative. Approximate size of the budget windfall from the Buffet Act is known as well — it makes about $5 billion. State budget will be fulfilled by 1%, but, what is more, the justice will be restored.
The next day, Democratic staff struck the opponent once again. Since public opinion polls indicated that Obama is popular among American women — and especially within the “educated, independent, living in big cities” segment of them — Romney, who did not support Obama’s bill on the discrimination of female employees, was accused of supporting the “salary inequality”. True tumult arose that evening, when Hillary Rosen, Obama’s aide was interviewed by the CNN. She claimed that Romney’s wife, Ann, has not worked a single day in her life, which is why her husband is so indifferent to the problems of working women.
Ann Romney has never worked indeed, but she reared five children, heroically fighting an oncological disease at the same time. As a result, her Twitter account (@AnnDRomney) with a single tweet “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work” gained 7 thousands followers in two hours. By the way, three days from then it was 34,066 of them. Besides, Romney’s staff spread the information that in average, female White House employees make 18% less money than their male coworkers. We may claim that Romney has successfully repented the attack on the female front, although Obama surely landslide the tax battle. However, this exchange of mutual touches is of merely theoretical interest to us, since it describes the pre-election campaign atmosphere well. Naturally, foreign-policy concepts of the candidates are of much greater interest and importance to us. Obama’s foreign policy will hardly change substantially after his possible victory. Without doubt, during the second term he will have more room for actions and will be less dependent upon the electorate opinion, yet there will hardly be a drastic turnaround. So let’s focus on Mitt Romney instead. Speaking in Russian terms his public image, drawn by political engineers, may be described as “stout business manager” and this reflects the reality up to a certain degree. Governing a traditionally Democratic state of Massachusetts, Romney has done his best in this quality.
However, ideological issues moved to the foreground. Upon a closer consideration his state-bound healthcare reform turned out to be about and about Barack’s own Obamacare, which every single Republican has taken arms against. Perhaps, due to the insufficient support of party “grass roots”, Mitt Romney has to demonstrate a macho foreign-policy approach now. He has already claimed the “perishing Russia” to be American enemy #1, has called to toughen up the political interaction with Iran, the DPRK and other “outcast states” (as they are known in Washington). According to Romney, Obama is too indecisive when it comes to foreign policy — a quality that does not befit the leader of such a great power as the USA — and basically just a naïve simpleton, double-crossed by crafty Russians and Chinese. As of now, he didn’t venture to move further than shouting about Iranian threat and the fact that Israel was “thrown under a bus”. Obama’s actions to decrease the numbers of American military contingents in Iraq and Afghanistan (along with bin Laden’s assassination) have granted him a favorable electoral assessment of the foreign-policy achievements. Henceforth, Romney will either have to be more serious about his international agenda or focus at the domestic policy — or rather domestic economy — issues, which are surely his cup of tea.
The bugbear of the GOP at the current elections is the lack of unity within its ranks. Relatively young Tea Party that hosts poorly-educated, underprovided and religious dwellers of American outback towns, proved capable of standing up against the business sharks, those traditional pillars of Republican electorate. Pragmatic business has chosen ideologically estranged, yet electable Romney instead of ideologically akin, though unelectable, Santorum. “Tea-partiers” haven’t submitted themselves to that. Their leader, Judson Phillips, told The Daily Caller on Apr 13 that, according to his sources, at least a quarter of Tea Party members won’t vote for Mitt Romney.
“The majority of us don’t believe that Romney is a truly conservative politician, which is why we won’t participate in his election campaign. Romney has big issues with the conservative core of the Republican Party and without it he is hopeless. Members of our party are going to focus the efforts on the Senate elections”.
He is echoed by another conservative leader, Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council, who told the CNN that it is difficult “for the Tea Party to support a person, whom our voters do not trust and do not welcome, which is why we would likely attempt to gain control over the U.S. Congress”.
In a situation when the Republican Party has split and cannot even grant support to its own home-bred candidate, pragmatic businessman Mitt Romney will likely try to turn the situation to his favor. We may suggest that the foreign-policy part of his platform will be the most paying in this sense. So, be ready for bold statements — starting with the bombing of Iran and up to the “insolent” anti-Chinese and anti-Russian initiatives. Since his chances to occupy the White House are quite small, we should not worry about them, remembering an old saying about the short horns of a cussed cow.
No comments:
Post a Comment