A Radical Laboratory

Primary season has begun, and the Republican Party remains undecided. It faces a president choked by unemployment, blocked by the Republican Congress, and his image tarnished by unfulfilled promises and collected disappointments. The opportunity to recover the presidency, leaving Obama as a one-term president like Carter or Bush senior, seems close at hand. But the problem is that a leader capable of uniting the conservative ranks and getting him out of the White House has still not emerged.

Yesterday’s Iowa caucuses, which began the primary campaign, clearly showed the division and doubts of the Republicans when it comes to finding the name of the person to defeat Obama. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and the candidate beaten by McCain in the 2008 primaries, has remained in the lead with 25 percent of the votes and only eight votes ahead of Rick Santorum, an ultra-conservative former senator with no chance of winning a presidential election. In third place, a short distance behind with 21 percent, has been Ron Paul, another token candidate. And in contrast, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, two politicians of some standing who had potential when they launched their campaigns, have been sunk with 10 and 13 percent.

The joke of the results in Iowa is that the three candidates who have taken the lead, with very little margin between them, is that each one of them personifies one of the three Republican souls that strive to prevail. The conservatism of Mitt Romney is that of business and money, above all pragmatic and mediating, and it goes without saying, reproaches the extremists of his party. Rick Santorum’s conservatism is particularly moral: He defends traditional values and even reactionaries, and is an activist against gay marriage and abortion. Finally, Ron Paul’s conservatism is more ambiguous, to the point that he can make many progressives enthusiastic: He’s a libertarian, highly individualist, enemy of taxes and public spending, and has no interest whatsoever in U.S. participation in foreign war ventures.

From here, there are only two possible paths that the Republican race can take. Either Mitt Romney prevails, despite the scant enthusiasm found in the ranks continually drifting further right of Republicanism, or it will follow the happy and noisy path of the moral fundamentalists and the minimal state toward the disaster for them that would mean another victory for Obama. Romney is now emphasizing his more conservative profiles and is attempting to get voters to overlook his very conventional political career, which includes a health reform very similar to Obama’s. His main trump card, however, is his ability to challenge and beat Obama, not the conservative purity of his message.

One piece of information alone, reflected yesterday in the exit polls, is telling: Six in ten Republican voters consider themselves born-again Christians. As with the Salafis and the Quran, they are people who believe that everything described in the Bible is a historical truth. It is no wonder that Santorum’s piety has been so successful among these voters. The American right is suffering from itself, prepared to give up power before the radicalism of its ideas and values. It is the surest path to the victory of the others.