Despite George Bush’s success at the polls, despite the fact that we have four more years of him, he is already beginning his passage into history. There is something just a bit ceremonial about a second-term president. They’ve done it. They’ve won. They have no more elections to fight, their patronage wanes. The focus begins to shift subtly to others in their party, others who have less of their future behind them.
So what about the other Republicans who won on 2 November, what are they like? It is frankly hard as a progressive European to imagine how they could not be an improvement on Bush. Actually, they are largely worse: more rightwing, even less restrained in the politics of fear. Above all, in 2004 pink became the new red, as fear of communists was replaced by fear of homosexuality.
Tom Coburn, the new senator in Oklahoma, has a clear moral message. It’s the ‘courage to stand against the moral corruption that is now attempting to undermine our republic.’ In case you thought that this was standard rightwing mouth-froth, it is not. Coburn, like so many of the new-school Republicans, turns sexuality into the basis of a renewed politics of fear.
‘The gay community has infiltrated the very centres of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power… That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today.’ He provides a lurid example of this pink peril: ‘lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that’s happened to us?’ Half titillation, half paranoia, this is classic rightwing fear-mongering. It would actually be funny but for two things: he went on to win the election and he chairs George Bush’s advisory committee on AIDS.
A fellow senator-elect, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, has picked up on the same anti-gay sentiments. He said during a debate with his Democratic rival that he did not think gay people should be allowed to teach in schools. When this caused some furore, he justified it by saying he did not think unmarried mothers should be allowed to teach either. Again and again, these people exercise their faith through judging others and use their definition of family values as a stick to beat millions of households across the country. Both DeMint and Coburn oppose any form of abortion, even for women who have been raped. Coburn goes so far as to call for the death penalty for doctors who perform abortion.
But for all their enthusiasm for controlling what we do in our bedrooms (or high school bathrooms) these, and the rest of the new crop are acutely liberal when it comes to asking the rich to pay taxes or setting limits on the actions of big business. In fact, DeMint campaigns against the US tax code for being too fair on poor people. His argument is as simple as can be. The poorest in society pay ever less of the total cost of government (he does not point out that this is because the poor are getting comparatively poorer). The poor need therefore to pay more tax. As long as they are not paying much tax they don’t understand that the government’s money is their money. He advocates either a ‘flat tax’ (a single rate of income tax) or the abolition of income tax and the raising of sales tax (the equivalent of VAT). Not only is that deeply regressive, but its point is actually that it is deeply regressive. Republicans are reaching a level of glorious shamelessness.
It is the same pattern with other new senators. They campaign on cultural issues with the intention of governing as straightforward economic libertarians. Above all, they campaign with fear. In Florida, Mel Martinez ferociously attacked his fellow Republican Bill McCollom in the primary race. He called him the ‘darling of homosexual extremists’, for not trying to block federal hate crime legislation. His attacks on other candidates were so vicious that he lost many newspaper endorsements. But he did not lose the race.
In Louisiana, David Vitter won on a campaign of anti-gun control and anti-affirmative action. He took paranoia to extremes – one campaign ad showed UN troops lowering the US flag. In South Dakota, Tom Daschle, the Democrat Senate leader, lost to the Republican John Thune. Anonymously, a huge number of bumper stickers declaring ‘Vote Daschle, Vote for Sodomy’ were distributed to churches.
Tom Coburn described the choice between him and the Democrat as the ‘choice between good and evil’. These five new senators will fight and campaign on fear. They will concentrate all people’s unhappiness into anger. Prepare yourself for six years of laws to reverse civil rights, legislative gay-bashing, anti-flag burning laws, abortion roll-back. While all the time, the causes of popular anger – unfulfilling jobs, crippling health insurance and wage stagnation – are ignored. Instead, a radical programme of redistribution will cart money and privilege over to the rich. This time the Sheriff of Nottingham won.
These senators are on the right of George Bush. Many started their rise under Newt Gingrich. These are the foot soldiers of radical movement conservatism. They have finally reached the top of the Hill. The Senate is not only important as the upper chamber, but also as the chamber that confirms judicial appointments. Unlike the more rowdy House of Representatives, it has prided itself on a measured style of debate and deliberation. These shock troops will try to end that. Already there are moves to overturn long-standing rules that further moderation.
Finally, if this were not bad enough, these conservatives, with their medieval personal morality and their robber-baron economics, are not at the end point of their political spectrum. Several religious groups in Oklahoma alone have called for a real conservative to
run to the right of Tom Coburn…