by Tola Adenle
On May 24 last year, I presented http://emotanafricana.com/2011/05/24/u-s-votes-2012-obama-will-do-it-again/ in what might have been considered jumping the gun, especially in Nigeria which is as far away from America – not in distance – as one could be. Well, the election year is upon us and it seems to have brought the worst in Republicans, nay, the worst in America’s dark buried past, into the fore.
The ugliness of America’s past has become a great fire in 2012, a fire first lit by the barely-coherent, barely-literate Palin who was plucked from the obscurity of governorship of tiny Alaska by Senator McCain as his running mate in the last general election. Palin has parlayed her appeal to closet red-necks, former Ku Klux Klanners whose blood-drenched night-time uniforms are still neatly hung with their Sunday bests, et al., to remember the way it used to be – to great wealth and fame. Worse, she has become an improbable leader in the so-called Tea Party Movement that developed around no other point but racism and exclusion politics.
If the woman who can barely articulate any issue beyond rallying racists behind her 2008 “he’s not like us” has become a force in American politics which has now grown into bolder Gingrich’s 2012 “Barrack Obama is the food stamp president”, “black kids should be put to work as floor cleaners in their schools”, etcetera, AND Santorum’s blacks have no male role models … welcome to the brave new world of America where racism has taken giant backward leap.
The extreme right – though a minority – has muscled its way to the top of American politics with a phrase I first heard during Ross Perot’s Independent Candidacy run in 1996 – Take America Back although Perot’s usage was different: take America back from those holding her back. He won almost 20% of the votes cast and gave America Bill Clinton’s presidency, an era of growth and surplus which was turned to great financial losses by the son of the same guy that Clinton defeated (George W. Bush, son of George W.H. Bush), thanks to Perot. Heree did not win the election but I’m sure he achieved his goal. Choice of song to dance to at final announcement of Bush going down to Clinton? Crazy …!
While former Speaker Gingrich and Senator Santorium have hit their strides playing to old fears of White-America, “moderates” in the Republican crowd which has thinned to less than a handful are trying not to be left in the dust by finding ways, no matter how ridiculous, to get at Barrack Obama. All is fair in war is sort of the norm in American political campaigns but hearing “moderate” Republican front runner, Mitt Romney, say “shove down the throat of President Obama” as opposed to an attendee of a debate shout out something like “kill him” is frightening.
In the mob’s equivalent of baying for blood, Republicans are cutting their collective nose to spite their collective face: the audience at a debate cheered the “toad” as aLondon Times essayist described Gingrich – when he slammed CNN reporter King for daring to ask what he (Gingrich) had to say about new allegation by ONE OF his ex-wives that he once asked for “open marriage” – ‘you do yours I do mine but we remain husband and wife’ arrangement. Gingrich is Catholic and Republicans are “family-values” people.
In 2008, Sarah Palin’s campaign speeches included what was not less than encouragement of Obama being assassinated by one of her admirers and that is a strain that has been carried over to the new season with the only African-American Congressman from the Republican Party, Allen West – a modern variant of the old “house negro” – who briefly shone as a “presidential material” excusing and explaining Gingrich’s Obama as the “food stamp president”. You never know, he could now be running for a Cabinet Position in a Gingrich’s presidency.
What I intend to do with this cycle of Election 2012 essays is present some of my old materials as they are not only as valid back when I wrote them for my readers in The Nation as they are today but they shed light on the goings on in the campaigns now. They will also fulfill one of the aims of this Blog: join many of my other contributions to newspapers.
Tomorrow: “Barrack Obama: a distant drum suddenly sounds very near.