But Santorum also
won in Colorado (Romney won in 2008) and Missouri, riding a wave
of distrust of Mitt's conservative credentials and showing Romney's one-percenter
Achilles heel. Romney's win in Maine
last week was Pyrrhic, as there were no delegates, and he just edged out
maverick Ron Paul. Romney and Santorum have each won four states, while Newt
Gingrich has won only a measly South
Carolina.
Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator and favourite of evangelicals
despite his papism, has hammered the former Massachusetts governor as being too moderate
to satisfy conservative Republicans who distrust him on social issues such as
abortion and gay rights which he has condoned in the past. Rick told CNN that
the wealthy Mitt, a former venture capitalist, "had a great career in the
private sector, but we're not running for CEO of the country. We're running for
someone who can lead the country." Romney was not the best candidate to take on
Obama, who is "oppressing and taking away our freedoms, our political freedoms".
Santorum smacks of
populism, the little guy's candidate, thumbing his nose at the rich and (horror
of horror) capitalism itself. Hey, which party is this guy in? Never fear.
Santorum is just making noises. He intends to gut social security, is a fan of
deregulation and torture, and a hawk on Iran: "Islamic fascism rooted in Iran
is behind much of the world's conflict," and "effective action against Iran"
would require America's fighting "for a strong Lebanon (what?), a strong
Israel, and a strong Iraq". Mind you that was in 2006 and he was opposed to
actually attacking Iran,
so this newspeak may indicate ... nothing at all.
The bitter
disillusionment of progressives in the past four years, under the absolute best
the Democrats can come up with, once again confirms that there is no real
difference anymore between the Republicrats. This is because left and right
have been banished from the political dictionary, replaced by what has been
called the "radical centre". This oxymoron has been explored in many
(mind-numbing) treatises to describe the post-Soviet era political playing
field.
This latest Great
Game features a unipolar empire asserting its financial and military hegemony
on a newly "flattened" playing field (as coined by Thomas Friedman to evoke the
joys of globalisation). The empire's team captain is no longer a left wing or
right wing, but an "extreme centre", a term which entered the US/UK political
lexicon with Ross Perot's Reform Party in the 1990s. These extreme centrists
claim to be drawing on the best of both sides in a "post-liberal,
post-conservative, post-socialist world". UK Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy
Prime Minister Nick Clegg wears the label proudly: "For the left, an obsession
with the state. For the right, a worship of the market. But as liberals, we
place our faith in people. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre."
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