The Republican Candidates are Obama’s Great Good Fortune

Disappointment with the 44th President is great. But considering the field of potential opponents he faces, he needn’t worry about re-election.

Obama can really relax this coming weekend. Barring any great surprises, the 44th President of the United States has the election on Nov. 6 already in his pocket. Not because his policies over the last four years have been all that successful — they haven’t been — but strictly because the Republicans are in no position to come up with a serious challenger to him.

Newt Gingrich’s resounding victory in South Carolina was the best proof of that: Of all places in the Bible Belt, there where many Democrats are more conservative than many northern state Republicans, they gave their votes to an adulterer.

That’s a fact that can’t be overestimated. Normally, an illicit sexual affair spells the end of a politician’s career, especially for a politician like Gingrich who built his career around a moral battle against Bill Clinton who had a dalliance with a White House intern. Now he has to admit that he was carrying on an extra-marital affair at the same time he was trying to hound Clinton out office.

The fact that Gingrich prevailed at the polls in South Carolina doesn’t bode well for either a good election or a good platform. It is nothing more than a vote against Mitt Romney. For Gingrich’s opponent, once favored to easily win the nomination, it’s a wake-up call: Obviously, conservative voters find Romney’s Mormon religious affiliation so offensive that they would rather vote for a philanderer.

So there have been three different winners in three elections and none of them are a serious threat to Obama. Not Rick Santorum, a candidate too conservative even for many Republicans and who, if nominated, would be incapable of attracting the four to five percent of undecided voters upon whom victory in a general election depends.

Not Gingrich who practices a policy of opportunism as evidenced by his recent argument that he, along with Bill Clinton, changed the country for the better (budget surpluses and full employment). Gingrich now seeks to link himself with Clinton, the man he once persecuted with near-biblical fury. It’s an embarrassing display of his lack of principles.

In order to score against Romney, Obama need only carry on with what the Republican presidential field has already begun: A discussion of productivity and income; a discussion of what kind of activity justifies a multimillion dollar annual income without suffering a guilty conscience. That’s also an indicator of how strange the Republican primary world has become: The ex-governor of Massachusetts is suddenly put on the defensive for being a successful businessman.

Ron Paul? The remaining fourth candidate is mentioned for no other reason than to round out the field. The libertarian politician is a genial curiosity, nothing more.

Never before has there been such little chance of preventing a sitting President from being reelected. Obama sorely disappointed his 2008 supporters. His willingness to compromise on policy meant the end of many of his initiatives that were eagerly supported by his followers, such as closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. That was the height of arbitrary policy promised in the first year of his administration. Guantanamo remains open. He was forced to significantly water down his healthcare reform program and his promised foreign policy offensive never materialized. Whether his economic recovery policies gain traction and are sustainable remains to be seen. Another economic downturn is the one thing Obama might have to worry about next November.

It’s entirely possible that Obama had the Republican presidential candidates in mind when he recently sang a few bars of an Al Green song; “I’m so in love with you.”