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| November 06, 2006 | Monday | Shawwal 13, 1427 |
Disillusioned America set to turn its back on Bush
Paul Harris in Wilkes-Barre
WILKES-BARRE (Pennsylvania): Senator Rick Santorum stood on Main Street in the small town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and spoke of the dangers facing America. He decried illegal immigration and defended 'family values'. His voice rose with fervour as he praised the fighting men and women in Iraq.
A small gathering of supporters cheered and Santorum beamed. He happily accepted the endorsement of Chris Simcox, head of the anti-immigrant vigilante group the Minutemen. 'This is about the future of our country,' Santorum declared. Dressed casually in a black jacket and orange shirt, the senator looked every inch a confident winner.
But the opinion polls tell a different story. Santorum, one of the most right-wing Republicans in America and the devout spearhead of Christian right politics, is almost certain to lose his seat. The Republican party is in deep crisis. As Americans go to the polls in vital midterm elections on Tuesday, the country is bracing itself for a Democratic wave that could sweep the party into control of both houses of Congress.
For men like Santorum, these are the worst of times. Six years ago, as George Bush took the White House, it was powerful Christian figures such as Santorum -- blending right-wing politics with extremist religion -- who looked like America's future. Now, it seems, the high-water mark of that sort of radical Republicanism has been reached. Top Republican strategists have written off Santorum's chances of holding his seat.
A survey by the Cook Political Report last week had Democrats leading Republicans by 52 per cent to 39 per cent. Studies in individual races show support for Democratic candidates surging. They need just 15 new seats in the 435-member House of Representatives and six in the 100-member Senate to wrest control of Congress from the Republicans. Most experts believe the House is a Democratic certainty and the Senate too close to call. 'The last two months have seen a remarkable turnaround in Democrat fortunes,' said Larry Haas, a political commentator and former aide in the Clinton White House.
Republicans have been buried by a wave of bad news from Iraq and the cumulative effect of scandal after scandal, from Hurricane Katrina to the gay sex difficulties that hit Republican congressman Mark Foley. It has all catastrophically damaged the Republican self-image of being the party of both defence and moral values. It is an image that has served the Republicans well since the 1994 congressional elections ushered in the conservative revolution of which Bush's second presidential win was the climax. Yet now the Democrats are poised to put a stop to it. This week could mark the end of their long political wilderness and the beginning of blue-state America's fightback.
Some Republicans hold the faith. Among them is Ann Marie Banks, 57. The former Democrat is a staunch Santorum supporter. As the senator walked down a sunny street in Wilkes-Barre, she grasped his hand. His blood-and-thunder views on security and faith are what inspires her. 'He's an all-out good man,' she said, before confiding: 'Democrats scare me. They are soft on terrorism, they don't like family values. They think gay marriage is fine.'
People such as Banks are Santorum's base. He shot to fame on the back of his extreme views. He has advocated teaching intelligent design in schools, spoken out against homosexuality and believes states should be allowed to outlaw all birth control, even for married couples. Campaigning in Wilkes-Barre - 'a hardscrabble' town in the Pennsylvania hills - he has not lost his fire. Addressing the issue of negotiating with Iran, Santorum is hyper-aggressive: 'Iran's leader does not respect people who talk to him. He respects people who fight him.'
But that talk is not working any more. In a country growing ever more horrified by its involvement in Iraq, no one wants to hear blood-curdling rhetoric about another war. That sort of muscularity belongs to an era before Katrina, before spiralling deficits, and when culture wars were the conflicts being fought, not real ones with a rising body count. Iraq now dominates the American public psyche -- more specifically, how to get out as quickly as possible.
The answer does not seem to lie in voting Republican. Polls in the past two weeks showed approval of Bush's handling of Iraq was at an all-time low of 29 per cent. And more than 75 per cent of Americans believe US troops will leave Iraq more quickly under a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Iraq, and the fact that more than 100 US troops died there in October, has laid waste Republican plans for fighting the election on terrorism and defence. 'It is the daily drumbeat from Iraq which just got to people after a while,' said Haas. Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, had planned to bang the national security drum, just as he did in the 2004 presidential race and the 2002 midterms, but the carnage in Iraq derailed that idea.
Suddenly the Democrats are keen to talk about the war and the Republicans are desperate to change the subject. Not that they have had much positive to change it to. Second to Iraq has been a wave of scandal, national and local, that crashed over the party. In fact, 15 of its congressional seats -- the exact number needed by Democrats -- have been made vulnerable due simply to Republican scandals. Four involve Republicans linked to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, five involve links to the Foley affair and the others are local issues ranging from tax dodging to sexual misconduct to suspect land deals.
That has all left the Republicans with few cards to play. They have resorted to trotting out the tried and tested cultural issues of gay marriage and abortion. At the same time they have tried to paint Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals, led by San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who will become the most powerful figure in a Democrat-controlled House. But few Americans are listening to those issues; even less have heard of Pelosi..—Dawn/The Observer News Service
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