The results of the US presidential primary for Republicans in the state of New Hampshire will start pouring on television within the next one and half hour.
The contest is the second one in the state by state race to determine which Republican candidate will face the incumbent President Barack Obama.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is favoured to win the contest tonight over five other rivals. The millionaire candidate barely squeezed a win in Iowa last week, winning by a mere 8 votes over his nearest rival Ric Santorum.
What makes the race to find a worthy opponent against Obama interesting is the struggle that the Republicans are having in making the choice. Governor Romney, though by far the best financed candidate and the favourite to win the nomination, is hated by his own party loyalists. Those deep conservatives believe that Romney is not a true conservative, and that he is a closeted liberal. He is savagely attacked by his fellow candidates as a flip-flop politician out to make himself very rich. Romney years in business was disastrously hard on workers fired by the businessman, they argue. He is a corporate vulture waiting to feed on the carcases of ailing businesses.
For the right wing voters, the desirable candidate has a strong moral streak, anti-abortion, a fiscal conservative eager to put an end to illegal immigration, reduce corporate taxes, cut welfare spending, reduce the trillion dollar deficit, yet strong on military spending. The ideal candidate would also be able to take back the White House from Obama who many Republicans see as a political accident that should never have happened to Americans.
The candidate that fits this description is former Senator Ric Santorum, the surprise second-place finisher in the Iowa contest last week. At the conclusion of that contest, in the wee hours of the morning, Santorum rose to the podium and gave one of the best conservative speeches in the contest to date. He is from a working class, a self-started who is strongly pro-life, pro-business, pro-corporate tax-cuts, but anti big debts. Santorum who came from behind to overnight and seemed stronger and healthier than front-runner Mitt Romney, appeals to the deep conservatives.
The problem is that while Santorum is strong in all the qualities that make American conservative voters, and especially the Tea-Party swoon with adoration, his politics is too conservative for America today. Simply, if Republicans choose Santorum to run against Obama in November, Obama will win with little effort. That’s because Santorum is so far to the right that he will scare away the independent voters needed to put him over the top.
The other candidates would fare no better against Barack Obama. Former speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is a recycled deadbeat politician with no new ideas. He looks physically worn out, dragging himself from one campaign stop to another. Americans would likely want to see an athletic candidate going toe to toe with the energetic Obama who plays a mean game of basketball, and was photographed two weeks ago on Hawaiian beach diving hard to save a beach ball. Gingrich is just not that person.
Meanwhile Texas Governor Ric Perry who has so far been a walking disaster in all the debates is unable to decide whether to sound like former US president George Bush or former US president Ronald Reagan. Republicans cannot take him seriously now, and would he would be a mere road kill against the Obama juggernaut in November. He will come in dead last tonight in New Hampshire, and likely to drop out of the contest after the primary in South Carolina next week.
The candidate likely to attract independent voters because of his libertarian politics is Texan Ron Paul. He is conservative without the nastiness and holier-than-thou attitude of Ric Santorum. He is old from another era without looking like dinosaur New Gingrich. He is perennially respectful, full of ideas of how to make America work again. But he lacks charisma, that invisible oomph that makes a candidate sizzle like Ronald Reagan and soar like Barack Obama. He is dull like a knife that has rusted outside and cannot cut through the thinnest skin of anything.
There is also Jon Huntsman who would be the ideal candidate to replace Barack Obama. He is knowledgeable, well travelled, speaks Cantonese fluently, has served four American presidents starting with Reagan and has the broad mind that would allow him to contemplate world issues calmly. He is however seen as an Obama stooge having served as Obama’s ambassador to Beijing for two years. To many Republicans who consider hatred of Obama as a virtue to be encouraged and celebrated, Huntsman is a sell-out. And depending on how well he does tonight in New Hampshire where he has worked hard to sell himself to the electorate, he may well travel on to South Carolina next week and onto Florida the week after.
The real threat to Obama’s presidency, in other words, is Mitt Romney. He is the conservative with ample energy, money, and charisma to take on Obama. He is especially dangerous to Obama because he will be able to appeal to the independent voters, disenchanted democrats who voted for Obama in 2008, and fiscal conservatives. He will never get the vote of the pure evangelical, Bible-fearing, gun-toting conservatives who see him as slightly better than Obama but still not worthy of their votes.
But he is the best hope to kick Barack Obama out of the White House in November 2012.
Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca