The Unpopular Favorite

Barack Obama’s presumed opponent for the presidency is the classic face of casino capitalism.

After Super Tuesday, millionaire Mitt Romney is still favored to be the Republican choice to face off with Barack Obama in the presidential election this November. That said, reservations among Republicans and the dissatisfaction of a party drifting radically to the right continue to loom large and keep Rick Santorum, Romney’s main opponent, still in the race.

His campaign jokes go over like lead balloons. During an appearance in South Carolina, the man with the tightly screwed-on smile did as he previously did in Michigan, Virginia and Ohio. After greeting the crowd, he peered into the branches overhead and asked, “What kind of tree is that? I’m not sure,” as the crowd of several hundred snickered and mumbled. “It’s a Mitt Romney tree, that’s what it is,” he concluded.

That’s the sort of wooden telephone post that Mitt Romney is carved from. The man who still has the best chance to be the party’s nominee to face Barack Obama on November 6th. The former Governor of Massachusetts (2003-2007) obviously has other strengths. Willard Mitt Romney will be 65 years old next Monday. He is a tall, slender man with chiseled features and a wife of 42 years, Ann, and is further blessed with five grown sons and a private fortune estimated at some $250 million. That makes him wealthier than the last eight presidents combined. And they weren’t exactly poor country boys.

Romney was born in Detroit, Michigan, the automobile capital of the United States. He is the son of George Romney, who became CEO of American Motors and later the governor of the state. He went to Brigham Young University and Harvard, where he studied law and business, as well as other disciplines favored by Mormons, a religion many wrongly consider to be a cult that practices polygamy. In 2002, Romney managed the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

Years prior to overseeing the Winter Olympics, he began amassing a fortune working in venture capital firms, notably as CEO of Bain Capital (1984-1999), where he became known for buying and selling companies for profit, a practice known as “vulture capitalism.” This hire-and-fire game averaged profits around 88 percent, but occasionally produced returns as high as 900 percent. His background not only made him a multimillionaire in the sense meant by Balzac (“behind every great fortune there is a great crime”), it also gave him a reputation that continues to follow him in his campaign through statements he has made, in which he hinted that in order for an economy to grow, people have to suffer.

Romney embodies the now discredited concept of casino capitalism in the United States. The fact that he seeks the nomination and eventually the White House is just one reason for the inner tension that the Republicans are experiencing. In a nation with an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, it shows that the dream of equal opportunity for everyone is precisely just that — only a dream.

In a country of this sort, the candidacy of someone so obviously part of the 1 percent is sure to cause more discomfort than complacency. Even after his recent electoral successes, he remains an unpopular candidate in many respects: a bloodied winner with a couple of black eyes. One might even say that the more primaries he wins, the more doubts grow as to whether he’s the right candidate, or whether the whole field of candidates is the best they could come up with.

Meanwhile, Romney is considered a moderate in this field of four, above all when compared to his closest challenger, former Senator Rick Santorum, who sees himself as the voice of the working man. Santorum is also vehemently anti-abortion (even in cases of rape) and against same sex marriage. Romney is considered to be more appealing to swing voters.

This observation shows just how far right the Republican Party has shifted and how large a problem this change presents. More so than Democrats, Republicans are seen as the party of unbridled capitalism. Ever since the financial crisis, however, a large part of the party’s base now claim to be tea party movement adherents and advocates for the little guy in need of protection from the government, public debt and “socialist paternalism,” like Obama’s healthcare program. This balancing act between the little guy on one hand and Romney’s vulture capitalist on the other is proving problematical for the Republicans.

Romney failed to be nominated when he ran for president in 2008. Despite seemingly unlimited campaign funds and a superior election machine, Romney has yet another handicap: his reputation as a flip-flopper. Except for opportunism, it’s impossible to determine what Romney really believes deep in his heart. As governor of Massachusetts, he instituted a liberal healthcare program for his state that eventually served as the blueprint for Obamacare. Yet that is precisely the first thing he promises he will get rid of if elected president. He has stood for looser immigration policies, stronger environmental protection laws and a woman’s right to choose in the abortion question. He has since abandoned all of these positions. Experts warn of deception and predict that he could very well revert to extreme liberalism. In reference to his positions on economics and the labor market, columnist E.J. Dionne wrote, “There is no room anymore for proposals remotely worthy of the moderate label. Romney’s plan is simultaneously extreme and very, very boring. It draws on the one and only idea that today’s conservatives offer for solving any and every problem that comes along: just throw yet more money at rich people.”

Romney, who considers himself to be a talented problem solver, promises to strengthen America’s middle class. Like Germany’s Free Democratic Party, he touts lower taxes (the FDP most recently promised an average 20 percent tax reduction per person). Romney, however, doesn’t say how he intends to lower taxes and keep his other promise to reduce the federal deficit. Experts calculate that his tax reductions would significantly benefit only the super wealthy who comprise 0.1 percent of the U.S. population. Since he already plans further gifts to the rich (lower property taxes, reduced taxes on luxury items and lower business taxes on the largest companies), professor Dionne concludes Romney is less a “pragmatic centrist” than “he’s an extremist for the privileged.”

With the notable exception of Congressman Ron Paul, the Republican candidates are also trying to outdo one another in foreign policy by way of a rabble-rousing competition that reflects the basic mood of the tea party movement’s desire to play on right-wing fears that America is being weakened. If he’s elected, Romney has vowed to reverse recent cuts to the military budget and ensure that the United States maintains its ability to fight two major wars simultaneously. He also promises to confront China if necessary, and has said that his first visit abroad as U.S. president will not be to Canada, the traditional destination, but to Israel.

Fidel Castro, obviously still a close observer of U.S. politics, sums up the quality of the Republican presidential field by describing it as “the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”