Journalist, Political Reporter, Cultural Critic, Editor/Proofreader
Alex V. Henderson
Philadelphia, PA
vixenatr
November 7, 2012
Presidential Politics
By Alex Henderson
RealmNoir, November 7, 2012
It’s official: President Barack Obama has been re-elected, defeating former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. And with the Democratic incumbent’s victory comes the burning question: where does the Republican Party go from here?
November 6, 2012 was hardly the first time the Republican Party has suffered defeat in a presidential race. In contrast to the crushing Electoral College defeats that the GOP experienced in the presidential elections of 1964 (when Barry Goldwater was swift-boated by the Lyndon Johnson campaign’s infamous “daisy ad”) and 1932, Romney won 206 electoral votes (compared to 332 for Obama). But make no mistake: Obama enjoyed a decisive victory in a close nail-biter of an election, and his hard-fought victory was impressive in light of all the corporate, post-Citizens United money that was pumped into the Romney campaign and the fact that incumbent presidents are usually voted out of office in tough economic times.
Former Republican National Committee (RNC) head Michael Steele characterized Romney’s defeat as a “spanking” for the GOP. Why did the GOP receive that spanking? There are different reasons. First and foremost is the economy. Romney often claimed to be sympathetic to the millions of Americans who are struggling badly in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, but his characterization of 47% of the U.S. population as worthless, lazy freeloaders was a slap in the face to the unemployed, the underemployed and all the Americans who are hurting financially through no fault of their own. The Obama campaign set out to paint Romney as an out-of-touch blueblood, and Romney was more than happy to live up to that.
But Obama’s re-election was not only about the economy. It was also about demographics. It was about the tarnishing of the GOP brand. Intellectually dishonest Republicans will whine that during the 2012 election, Democrats unfairly characterized their party as anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Black and anti-Hispanic, but in fact, the far right gave Democrats so much ammunition to work with.
One needn’t be a radical feminist to be appalled by the vicious misogyny that came from the GOP in 2012. Rush “Pillhead” Limbaugh’s denunciation of law student Sandra Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute” for believing that health insurance companies should cover contraception for women was terrible for the GOP brand, especially in light of the fact that so many Republicans didn’t have enough backbone to stand up to Pillhead. Romney meekly said that he would have “used other language”; he was clearly afraid of a hateful, bigoted, drug-addled misogynist who wields way too much influence in the modern GOP.
Certainly, Missouri Republican Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin’s idiotic claim that rape victims won’t get pregnant if they will themselves not to didn’t help the GOP brand during the 2012 election. Nor did Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock’s comment that if a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape, it is “something God intended" (Akin and Mourdock both lost to Democrats in U.S. Senate races). How nice to know that the vicious crime of rape is God’s will, Mr. Mourdock.
Ugly racism was also part of the GOP brand in 2012. From Donald Trump to Orly Taitz, birthers made it clear that they didn’t believe America’s first African-American president was really a U.S. citizen—never mind the fact that Obama’s birth certificate is a matter of public record (he was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii). And Romney himself went birther with his remark that voters could be sure Romney was born in the United States. Obama’s policies should not be exempt from criticism or scrutiny from either the left or the right, but every time a Republican went birther in 2012 or described the president as “the Kenyan,” it cheapened the political discourse. Serial adulterer Newt Gingrich (the hypocrite who lambasted President Bill Clinton for committing adultery while he was doing the same damn thing) called Obama the “food stamp president,” insinuating that food stamps are only for African-Americans. Sarah Palin (one of the worst examples of Republican anti-intellectualism) used the words “shuck and jive” to describe the president, offering yet another racist dog whistle to the GOP’s dixiecrat base.
Last night, roughly 70% of the Hispanic vote went to Obama—which was interesting in view of how many Latino activists have criticized the president for not being more proactive in the area of immigration reform. But then, the GOP brand has suffered considerably among Latino voters in recent years thanks to GOP yahoos like Tom Tancredo (who once called John McCain “Juan McCain” because he felt that the Arizona senator was soft on indocumentados). English-only nonsense doesn’t help the GOP brand either; the vast majority of first-generation Latino immigrants do make an effort to speak English and assimilate, and their kids inevitably grow up speaking English as their primary language.
Flip-flopper Romney wasn’t always an extreme social conservative; rather, he reinvented himself as one. Romney once claimed to be to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights and described himself as strongly pro-choice on the abortion issue; the Romney of 2012 consistently pandered to the Christian Right, calling for the overturn of Roe v. Wade and a nationwide ban on same-sex marriage (so much for “states’ rights”). And the fact that Romney had to move so far to the right on social issues is evidence of what the GOP has become: a theocratic party where it is no longer possible to win a presidential nomination without pandering to the most radical of Christian fundamentalists.
If the GOP is serious about reducing the number of abortions in the United States, there is a good way to accomplish that: promote comprehensive sex education and encourage the use of contraception. That approach works really well in Switzerland and other European countries with low abortion rates. But instead, the Christian Right opposes sex education—and if Sandra Fluke favors contraception use as a way to prevent the need for abortions, she is branded a “slut” and a “prostitute” by Pillhead Limbaugh and his mindless, knee-jerk followers. Welcome to the freak show known as the modern Republican Party.
The fact that former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson dropped out of the GOP presidential race and joined the Libertarian Party (and won the LP’s presidential primary) speaks volumes about the modern GOP’s theocratic nature. Johnson is a right-wing intellectual—a hardcore fiscal conservative who is unapologetically liberal on social issues. But there was no room for Johnson in the GOP of 2012, which underscores the fact that today’s Republican Party is not a big tent, but a party where Christian fundamentalist and neocon litmus tests are the norm.
Bottom line: not every U.S. citizen is a white male Christian fundamentalist over 50. And the more the GOP paints itself as anti-woman, anti-Black, anti-Latino and anti-gay, the more its base will shrink. The GOP of 2012 is not the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Earl Warren and Dwight D. Eisenhower; even Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon would be too liberal for the GOP of 2012. The GOP of 2012 is the party of Focus on the Family and Pat Robertson. It is, by and large, a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, woman-hating, anti-intellectual death cult—and one needn’t be left-of-center to see that, which is why Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine will not be seeking re-election and why the late Arlen Specter defected to the Democratic Party. Specter didn’t leave the Republican Party; they left him.
Obama himself is far from the flaming leftist his far-right critics paint him as being. He is a moderate/centrist with a populist streak who is arguably somewhat to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Obama has frustrated liberals and progressives at times and enjoyed their admiration at times. But he is an intellectual, and the GOP of 2012 is so radical and so unhinged that many liberals and centrists (and some conservatives as well) obviously felt the need to repudiate the GOP brand last night.
Today, Republicans are whining, sulking and licking their wounds over Obama’s re-election victory. But instead of whining, they need to check themselves and do some serious soul-searching. Where does the Republican Party go from here? Last night, the majority of Latino, African-American and female voters told them to go to hell.
Alex Henderson is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, Billboard, Spin, XBIZ, Creem, Skin Two, The Pasadena Weekly, JazzTimes, Cash Box and a long list of other well-known publications. He can be followed on Twitter @alexvhenderson.
President Barack Obama addresses multiracial crowd during his victory speech in Chicago, and contrary to what wingnuts and birthers would have us believe, Hugo Chavez was nowhere to be found.
Copyright 2022 Alex V. Henderson. All rights reserved.
Alex V. Henderson
Philadelphia, PA
vixenatr