Tea Party Activists Reflect America's Checks and Balances
"Now,
after the Republican success, Obama must now defend his intelligent reforms.The 'winners' have no
coherent program and are ideologically divided.Because aside from espousing libertarian
stereotypes that no rational politician could possibly take seriously and which
perfectly reflect age-old WASP ideology - and a nearly undisguised revanchist
racism - the Tea Party is doing nothing other than compromising the idea of responsible
government."
In the Romanian language, the word “elections” stands both for individual choices on human actions based on values, principles or interests - and for the so-called competitive process in which politicians are elected.
Although elections are a means and not an end, i.e.
a mechanism to release social tension and engender political compromise with
the intent of ensuring political power is balanced and controlled, elections, especially
under the influence of the majority “mysticism" and political advertising,
have taken mythology as an electoral tool and turned it into a kind of electoral
ordeal.Every position is presented as if God had
intervened in politics and shown the way.In
essence, this results in an atmosphere with which political compromise not only
cannot be arrived at, it will lead to a lawmaker's removal from office. And in effect,
that explains the recent result in the American elections.
But although the November 2 American midterm
elections illustrated Barack Obama’s long predicted if not assumed electoral
failure, they didn't indicate a way forward.Although
from an electoral standpoint, Barack Obama has been put on the defensive, with
a hostile and rejuvenated Republican House of Representatives, he's no longer alone
in being responsible for American policy.
As a result of Tuesday’s elections, Republicans
are obliged to assume an element of government and can no longer benefit from
the advantage of being in opposition.For although it is
a presidential system, the midterm elections provide the American form of
government with a mechanism of checks and balances.This
happened in 1994 with Clinton and 2006 with Bush.And
for the most part, Obama has passed his economic and social program, even if
his liberal critics accuse him of excessive compromise on health and financial reform.
He managed to do what no other progressive president has - from Roosevelt onwards.Indeed, in terms of health
insurance, even Roosevelt had failed.
Now, after the Republican success, Obama
must now defend his intelligent reforms.The
“winners” have no coherent program and are ideologically divided.Because aside from espousing libertarian stereotypes that no rational
politician could possibly take seriously and which perfectly reflect age-old White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideology - and a nearly undisguised revanchist racism -
the Tea Party is doing nothing other than compromising the idea of responsible
government."
The movement, presented as being “populist,”
is in fact economically and socially extremist and religiously fundamentalist.
It is a consequence of fear for the future, but also a knee-jerk result of the
2008 elections. Tea Party politicians are inexperienced politically and
advocate "ideological" positions not shared by a majority of
old-fashioned Republicans.If they remain adamant
about the positions they took during the campaign, Tea Party politicians will
create divisions within the Republican camp that will be difficult to overcome.If they become conciliatory, they will disappoint the extremist voters that
mobilized to support them.But beyond electoral
calculations regarding the 2012 elections, the elections of 2010 show that spurred
by the economic crisis, the U.S. cannot escape the tendency to shift toward the
extreme right, just as is occurring in Western Europe.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Nevertheless, the Republican tide wasn't as high
as had been expected, even if have Democrats suffered their biggest defeat in
history in the House of Representatives [actually, since 1948, when Democrats
lost 71 seats].It was an electoral failure for Obama, but
not a political one.If some commentators talk about a protest
vote against Barack Obama, it was, in reality, a vote of fear incited by media
and business groups affected by Obama’s policies.Not
only was their reaction predictable, but the electoral effect was to be
expected.
Perhaps centrist voters who voted Democratic
in 2008 moved toward the Republicans. But Obama’s failure doesn't mean that
America has turned 180 degrees against the vote of 2008. Since voter turnout was
much lower than two years ago and mobilization against Obama was at
unprecedented levels, Tuesday's vote was not a sign that extremism has taken
hold of the majority of American society, but a manifestation of the mechanism
of checks and balances.
Certainly, Barack Obama has disappointed
many voters, mainly due to the financial situation generated by an economic depression.But that doesn't mean he has lost the game!This
can also be said about Nicolas Sarkozy and [Romanian President] Traian Băsescu,
whose images were badly impacted by the crisis.We
can readily imagine what the results of an election in Romania would be today.But Barack Obama still has a 46 percent approval rating, while Nicolas
Sarkozy has 30 percent and Traian Băsescu only 10 percent.And the latter isn't even half way through his term - the first year of
a five-year mandate.
