The Return of the Republicans

The Republican Party makes me sad about America.

Watching the conventions, Americans and people all over the world got to taste two different brands of American exceptionalism. One brand believes that America isn’t perfect but it can achieve anything it desires if it bands together. Another believes America is an infallible gift from God that will remain the light of the world so long as it isn’t corrupted by various evils.

Introducing exhibit one, Mitt Romney, who spoke at the Republican convention. To him, some of those evils are domestic. “For decades, the Washington sun has been rising in the east - Washington has been looking to the eastern elites, to the editorial pages of the Times and the Post, and to the broadcasters from the coast,” said Romney, an odd statement coming from the former Governor of Massachusetts and a rather elite businessman.

Romney also called for America to “throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain,” an odd statement since McCain would be throwing a conservative republican out of the white house if he won.

Keeping people fearful requires external threats, above all. In a few paragraphs, Romney added radical violent Jihad, Evil Empire, Axis of Evil, radical violent Islam, Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, interwoven with higher taxes, bigger government, unions, and Al Gore. Be afraid.

It is no wonder the one party inspires the rest of the world and the other angers it. Regardless, no one would be able to convince Americans to ask the rest of the world whom to elect as their next president, nor should they.

This is not to say that John McCain is just another Republican or carbon copy of George W. Bush, which the Obama campaign is arguing. No one who has followed American politics for more than this election cycle should believe that. McCain has angered Republicans as often as Democrats during his career.

There are several reasons why the Obama campaign is nevertheless justified in equating the two. McCain has in fact voted with Bush 90 per cent of the time over the last eight years, and the Obama campaign needs anti-Bush sentiment to win the election. Additionally, although McCain is playing the “maverick” card as much as possible, he has actually campaigned as much more of a run-of-the-mill conservative Republican compared to his record. This fact is articulated in last week’s Economist.

McCain, like Obama, is trying to get elected president, and he can’t do that without the support of the majority of conservatives. But McCain the conservative Republican campaigner won’t necessarily be McCain the president.

My objections therefore remain with the Republican Party rather than with McCain. Its policies and politics are unhealthy for America and it is because of McCain’s party that I cannot support his candidacy. For America to get the change it so desperately needs the GOP needs to sit the next four years out, regardless of their candidate.

McCain’s experiences are relevant and his service heroic, but if that really mattered to Republicans as much as they made it seem during this convention, then the GOP would have nominated him in 2000. He lost a vicious primary battle that year to George W. Bush, a young governor with almost no military experience. Today Bush is so unpopular the Republicans saw McCain as their only shot in a relatively pro-democrat America.

With McCain, the GOP were handed an opportunity to embrace the centre and seem to have rejected it by assimilating a once controversial maverick, not to mention making the election into reality-TV with the introduction of Sarah Palin, ridiculing people who serve their country in ways that aren’t political or military by insulting community organizers, trying to get Americans to ignore their economic or health-care related problems, and bringing back fear-based politics. Because John McCain is a member of the Republican Party, Obama for America.

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Alex Leduc is a freelance columnist and blogger, as well as a journalism student at Concordia University. All his political columns are available at www.alexleduc.com