The Problem with Republicans

Fortunately, America is a large country; otherwise the Republicans would eventually run out of candidates for the White House. We had Michele Bachmann, an ally of the tea party, before she left in a spin and made her supporters laugh with her business of healing homosexuals. Then Rick Perry was the flavor of the day until his bizarre behavior during a speech in New Hampshire and his subsequent memory lapse derailed his candidacy. Herman Cain, the pizza entrepreneur, was then the savior of the Republican Party until his private behavior came to sink it. Before that, we had his hilarious 9-9-9 plan, which was supposed to solve all the fiscal problems of the United States.

Alone, these three candidates demonstrate the peculiar climate prevailing in the United States. Even and especially in in the America of Richard Nixon, the Republican Party would never have dared to present candidates creating more farces than policies.

Yet now Newt Gingrich finds himself promoted to the candidate of the day when he had completely disappeared from the radar — even some of his team had abandoned ship in September. He leads in two key states: Iowa and South Carolina, with 33 percent voting intention, more than double that of the poor Mitt Romney, which hurts even more than four years ago. Since Chris Christie, the popular New Jersey governor provided him with support, Romney could already see himself at the White House and the tea party was becoming a joke with a Republican candidate opposed to their ideas. But Romney does not interest the Americans because he is too smooth and not straightforward; one day he’s for health insurance, against it the following day, one day for tax cuts, against it the next. Not to mention that in an America that is not at its best form, we discover that he plans to invest $12 million to expand his residence on the Pacific coast.

But how long will Gingrich run before he destroys himself and then laughs about it on the David Letterman talk show, like Rick Perry and Herman Cain before him? Already, when it was revealed he had received $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, the government agency that guarantees mortgages on homes and had a brush with bankruptcy, he defended himself by saying that he had no need for the money because he earns $66,000 per speech. Bad move: the average annual wage in South Carolina is $58,000. Newt revealed to his electors that he earns in 45 minutes what they themselves take more than a year to earn. He presents himself as a unifier when he was on three occasions responsible for the closure of state services which cost him his position as Speaker of the House of Representatives. In addition, being the most unruly man of all U.S. politics is never an asset when trying to reach the White House.

In the same manner that a sedimentation rate exists, they should be creating a new measurement called the “speed of self-destruction” of the Republican candidates. At the current rate, Barack Obama does not have any need to worry.