US-Election 2008

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Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany
Back to Ronald Regan
By Christian Wernicke
Translated By Ron Argentati
(Originally written before Romney’s resignation)
Germany - Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Original Article (German)
Despite Mitt Romney’s Michigan victory in the Republican primaries, the party hasn’t smartened up. He’s not a Phoenix rising from the gray ashes of the Republican party. America’s Republicans are as puzzled as ever. They neither know where to go nor whom they want to follow. None of the men aspiring to the presidency fulfills the voters’ longing for new leadership.
It seems that George W. Bush is leaving his party only scorched earth: Eight out of ten American citizens (and one out of two Republicans) think the nation is on the wrong course. At the beginning of the election year 2008, the Grand Old Party lies in rubble and ashes. And nowhere in this gray pile is a Phoenix to be seen.
In its malaise, America’s right-wingers have emerged as an ancestor-worshiping cult. Everyone yearns for the long-departed Ronald Reagan – America’s 40th president – who during the nineteen eighties managed to unite the differing and often contrary wings of his party and forge them into a powerful army for his conservative revolution. None of the current aspirants exudes such an aura.
John McCain, for example, war veteran and aging senator, attracts moderate voters. But he appeals only to that segment of the party that places a strong military and national security above all. Meanwhile, the religious right, until now the most faithful conservative supporters, gathers around former Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee.
Powerful economic conservatives, at the same time, incline toward Mitt Romney, ex-business manager and former governor of Massachusetts, who won the Michigan primary vote. An interim review of Republican self-discovery – three primaries with three winners – reveals there is no leader to bind the party together
In the midst of this emergency, each of the Republican candidates campaigns for the right to the halo pronouncing him the rightful heir to Reagan’s throne. It is precisely this competition that leads the party off the track. Reagan's political mixture - military rearmament, religious renewal, radical tax cuts, including reducing government - is not a cure for current problems: The nation can no longer cope with billions more for the Pentagon, ever more fanatical Christian zeal against abortion and gays, and more tax relief for the wealthy at the expense of already impoverished communities. More of this kind of drastic remedy à la Ronald would drive the country to ruin. The popular desire for change, long rumbling amongst the people, is beginning to rumble in the Republican ranks as well. A good third of party supporters call for a strong state - not only as a guardian of law and order - but also as a guarantor of social and economic security at a time when Americans fear recession more than they fear the situation in Iraq.
These fears are addressed by right-wing candidates with nothing more than cheap populism. While they begin to disengage themselves from Bush, they do not have the courage to break from Reagan’s dusty old recipes.
The Republican renewal must wait until after the election.