Obama’s right wing enemies see Kenya as new battleground

A group of US congressmen has been visiting our country this past week where they held various meetings with political players. They went as far as any other US official has gone to back the enactment of the proposed constitution.

Unknown to many Kenyans, there is a sideshow to the big local fight for the draft law that is playing itself out in Washington DC. You hear about it intermittently from reports that certain congressmen sitting on the Africa sub-committee of the US House of Representative’s Committee on Foreign Affairs have been lambasting the Obama administration for supporting a Kenyan draft law that “legalises” abortion (the monopoly for untruths is by no means confined to Kenyan provocateurs).

And there are the scattered reports of US-based evangelical churches allegedly funding their Kenyan counterparts on the ‘No’ side. The most vocal US politician concerning our draft law is New Jersey congressman Chris Smith, the top Republican on the Africa sub-committee.

It so happens that virtually all the US politicians busy trashing our draft constitution are Republicans.

In this campaign abortion is just an excuse. In fact, I doubt very much if they care a hoot about the draft constitution, which they most likely have not read.

They are driven purely by domestic US politics. For them, the Kenyan battle over a new constitution has opened another useful front in their deadly political war against Obama.

A defeat for the ‘Yes’ side in the referendum will come in handy for the Republicans. It will embarrass the Obama administration, which is correctly perceived to be in support of the new constitution.

Obama’s family connection to Kenya has certainly not escaped the Republicans, which is why fighting him right here matters considerably to them.

I doubt they would care if it were a place like Gabon or Brunei holding a referendum. They badly want to politically wound him on “home ground,” so to speak.

It’s hard to believe it, but there is a fringe movement in America that still claims Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to be president; only US-born candidates need apply.

I referred earlier to events in Kenya as a sideshow because the main battle between Obama and his right-wing enemies is being fought in America itself. The enactment earlier this year of Obama’s signature legislation, the Healthcare Bill, brought the confrontation to a head.

Other battlefronts were opened when Obama supported a trillion-dollar financial bailout for beleaguered banks and vehicle manufacturers.
It is difficult for somebody sitting in faraway Kenya to imagine the raw animosity Obama generates among rightwing Republicans.

It is no exaggeration to say that probably no other president from the Democratic Party has ever excited as much hatred from American conservatives as Obama is doing.

They have painted the man as a “socialist” because of the money he has committed for the bailouts and what is likely to be spent on healthcare reform. There are darker innuendoes to the “socialist” tag they have given Obama which the Republicans won’t say in public.

But one thing is clear: they will do anything under the sun to stop him being re-elected in 2012. And judging from the commotion they are causing, they could as well succeed.

In this crusade the Republicans are enjoying the enthusiastic support of evangelical groups. Or rather, it is the Republican politicians who are following the anti-Obama trail charted by the evangelicals.

Unlike in Kenya, these groups are particularly powerful in the US. They have become the dominant force in the Republican party and in the so-called Red states.

Moreover, they have loads of money and very well-organised grassroots structures. Republican senators and Congressmen defy them at their own peril. Abortion is a pet peeve for these US evangelicals, and no wonder the Republicans have taken it up.

A phobia against Islam is another thing that defines the evangelicals. The confluence of these two issues in Kenya’s constitutional debate naturally explains where their sympathies — and perhaps money — are being directed.

The success of the right-wingers in the US has bred an urge to export their brand of ideology overseas; they should not be underestimated. It looks certain Obama dispatched Vice-President Joe Biden to Kenya to seek to counter the poison being spread from Washington DC about our draft law.

gwarigi@ke.nationmedia.com