If this weren’t the right wing, it’d look like the left. Today in Washington, in the hollow ballroom of a hotel, the confused and quarrelsome forces of a party — the Republicans — are getting together; they’re excited about the victory in the midterm elections of last November but still in search of a representative and a reason to stay together beyond contempt and hatred of Barack Obama.
A motive that was enough to reverse the Democratic majority might not be enough in two years if the slow but secure recovery of the national economy, and therefore the recovery and stabilization in national popularity of the Democrats, motivates the vote of millions of uncertain and disgusted Democrats who stayed at home four months ago. This is the 38th meeting of CPAC, the action-taking (and financing) committee of American conservatives torn between Reagan’s orphans and the new anti-political activists of the tea party, between the survivors of electoral defeats and the new lions and lionesses, between libertarians who dream of abolishing the Federal Reserve and bankers who, instead, care a lot about it. It’s a right wing festival that — according to the classic formula of “Will I get noticed more if I don’t show up?” — the glaciers queen (Sarah Palin who indignantly stays in her Alaska to be — when she doesn’t want to confront the rest of the world — the “mother” of her five children) will miss.
Since in politics it’s easier to oppose than to propose, now the contenders for the crown of leadership of the conservative forces of the 2010 duel have to fight each other, without sparing any blows below the belt. The men and women that will take over for three days on the podium of the Marriott hotel ballroom to conquer the support of this “action-taking committee” that works as a political and financial lung of the Republicans, must number at least 40, a cavalry of rhetoric and naps in the tepid darkness of the salon. There were supposed to be only 39, but at the very last moment (proof of the confusion and of the “everybody free”) the real estate and TV personality Donald Trump invited himself; once again, he’s flirting with the idea of running for president — the last toy his collection misses. But being anti-Obama is the only common area that manages to get applause among the conservatives: the backcombed and over-dyed tycoon with the wisp; the fanatic of the most snarling right wing, Michele Bachmann; the moderate Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts, defeated in the 2008 primaries because he was too “progressive;” the popular “Paul Duo” of Ron and Rand, father and son, who ask in the name of the tea party rebels for the demolition of the central government and the IRS. Not to mention, the 68 year-old, multi-defeated and now back in the land of the living, Newt Gingrich, author of the “Contract with America” from the 1990s that was promptly copied in Italy, and the former governor of Minnesota, Tom Pawlenty who’s become the standard-bearer of that Christian, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage right wing that is showing signs of a comeback on the political scene after the eclipse of the past four years.
Beyond the borders of this predictable unanimity of anti-Obama feelings, fiscal allergies and disgust toward healthcare reform, the ground under the “Big Tent” of the party, which is how the Republicans like to describe themselves, gets slippery and muddy. Palin, like Reverend Huckabee who was very liked during the race of 2008, wants out and is getting ready to resume the theme of the Kulturkampf, the fight for “traditional values” (read: anti-gay) against the materialistic relativism of the Democrats. This fight represents unifying factor of the Republicans now that the fight against the “Islamic threat,” the “War on Terror” and the recession risks losing much of its appeal. Other proudly conservative movements not aligned with the tea party — like the Heritage Foundation, a think tank of severely reactionary brains — wanted out, and the increasingly influential organizations of Republicans who want equal rights for gays didn’t show up. Wrecks and fainting stars of past wars, like Rick Santorum, already an excited fighter for Christian values when he was senator and soundly defeated when he ran for governor of Pennsylvania, fights from a distance with Palin, accusing her of hiding behind her family, receiving in return the proto-feminist definition of “Neanderthal man” by the grouchy glaciers and today’s TV queen.
Who will emerge from this primordial broth of the American right wing? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one of the favorites in the long race, who has experience in governing an important state, or one of the new “crazy people” of the tea party, who barely recognize each other under the tent of the old weasels of the hack politics, like the very young Marco Antonio Rubio, hot Cuban blood from Florida with big charisma? That’s the question the Republicans will have to answer. And they will have to do it more quickly than the calendar might let them think. Nov. 6, 2012, the date of the presidential election, is 20 months from now, and it looks like a long time, but it’s not. On a day in February 2007, the same 20 months from the vote of 2008, a guy walked the steps of the city of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Ill., to announce that he’s aiming at the White House. His name was Barack Obama.