Oddballs in the Republican party that Mitt Romney has to satisfy

On the day America’s Republican Party was meeting to crown Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate, I was fearing the worst.

Images of Hurricane Isaac hurtling from the Caribbean and ramming into Tampa City in Florida, the venue of the meeting, played in my mind.

I wouldn’t attribute my fears to any ill-will on my part for the candidate, though I wouldn’t say the same of some of the party’s ideologues who were in the convention.

It is said a person is known by the company he keeps. In Romney’s case, it is the company he keeps that makes him remain unknown.

Prominent in this company is a faction called the Tea Party. Its disciples believe taxation is evil and they view the Federal government bureaucracy as a general menace.

They see President Barack Obama as a hardcore socialist who is stealing from the hardworking rich to redistribute to the idle underclass.

Romney was basically sucking up to this faction when he named Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Ryan grew up besotted with the philosophy of a Russian-Jewish immigrant called Ayn Rand.

Two of the books she wrote in the last century – Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead – became quite influential and got a cult following in many countries.

Rand’s credo was that the world comprises two kinds of people – the select super-achievers who conceive ideas and create things, and the non-achievers who simply eat up the wealth others have created and who the State panders to for votes.

She preached that for civilisation to reach its highest level, the State must unfetter the gifted individual and let his radiance shine for all time.

But if the Tea Party is unsettling, the other faction with a vice-grip on the Republican Party is quite frankly alarming.

It comprises the evangelicals and assorted Christian radicals, or “religious conservatives” as they prefer to be known.

They believe, literally, that America is the New Jerusalem which the Lord has beamed a light on for the entire world to behold – if only charlatans like Obama got out of the way.

To them, Obama is a closet Muslim who is plotting jihad against the West from the vantage point of the White House.

Ever heard of the “Birthers” who insist Obama is not American and was born in Kenya? They belong to this faction. Nor do they buy the fact of global warming.

They believe it is all a hoax. What is more, they demand something called “Creationism” be taught in schools as opposed to evolution, which to them is yet another hoax.

Every country, every organisation, has its oddballs. The remarkable thing about the Republican Party is that its oddballs hold it hostage.

To be sure, Romney is a clever man, a smart businessman, a canny politician. Unlike George W. Bush, he does not pander to the extremists because he thinks them sensible.

Deep down, he knows what they profess is nonsense. What dismays is the extent American democracy expects intelligent people to jettison their brains in order to get elected.

Many Africans like to believe Obama’s opponents in the Republican Party are essentially racist. The truth is somewhat different. Romney thinks of Obama as a well-meaning simpleton who gives rousing speeches but is out of his depth in the Presidency.

In a way, you would rather a person who detests you because of your colour and not the one who pities you for who you are.

-----------------

A heady mix of secessionist mania and jihadist mumbo-jumbo is making Mombasa unrecognisable.

Neither unemployment nor “marginalisation” begin to explain the hatred on display against non-Coastals and the emblems that are supposed to define them, like churches.

The slogan Pwani si Kenya is getting a chilling new expression. The Mombasa protests were not about “oppression”. No. They were about taking advantage of a perceived power vacuum at the centre of the State.

[email protected]