Ian Williams says Barack Obamas bitterly-divided Republican enemies could help to get him relected by Ian Williams

Saturday, January 14th, 2012 Covering the Republican primaries is a bit like watching Fraggle Rock after drop ping a tab of LSD. Until John Huntsman entered the fray in New Hampshire, it som etimes seemed like only Ron Paul had his feet on the ground with the large cavea t that for him the ground is on another world, conjured up by the fertile reacti onary imagination of Ayn Rand, the philosopher who channelled Barbara Cartland to write bodice-rippers on the model of Mein Kampf. As always, the sound of silence was most deafening. In the media scrum around th e candidates, no one seems to have noticed that, for all his faults, Barack Obam a is effectively unchallenged. He will gracefully segue to be the Democratic nom inee as the Republicans eviscerate each other in public. If re be he Gordon Brown, or Ed Miliband, had had the courage or perhaps chutzpah is a mo appropriate term to do what the Republicans are doing, Labour would probably in power now. If they had actively disavowed Tony Blair and New Labour along t way they could have benefited from the reflex vote.

But Republicans have not so much disavowed the two Bushes who represent their par tys last three terms in the White House as made them non-persons. They are not me ntioned at all. That neatly allows Republicans to smear Obama for the financial crisis and for t he bailouts at the end of George W Bushs presidency. There is some justice there, since Bill Clintons term actually espoused much of t he ethos of voodoo economics and deregulation, but it took the junior Bush to st rip regulators of power and introduce the tax cuts that paved the way for the pa rallel financial and fiscal crises that now hamper any attempts at recover. Iron ically, George Bush senior is a non-person for opposite reasons because he oppos ed voodoo economics and actually increased taxes. Two years ago, it would have been difficult to believe that a party could be reelected on a platform that effectively vetoes any effective regulation of the ba nks and companies that caused the crisis. Despite their differences, that is wha t unites almost every Republican candidate. The sleight of hand is so audacious it is admirable: through the Tea Party, the Grand Old Party has channelled the und erstandable rage against big banks and big business against the only institution s that can challenge them big labour and big government. By invoking abstractions such as freedom and enterprise with the amplification that huge corporate donations give them, Republicans drown out their actual practice, which is to pander to any business interest that wields a cheque. Set against a faith-based minority that votes in the Republican primaries, they can get away with this. Their voters do not believe in climate change, evolution or Obamas Ame rican citizenship, so they are addressing an audience already strongly inclined to credulity, to denying the evidence of reality. So Obama was responsible for t he bailout and it was government interference in the free market that forced ban ks to give mortgages to the feckless poor (a coded terms for black) that brought about the crisis are easily digested counterfactuals. However, the secret of their success is that they meet no ideological opposition . Since Bill Clinton, most of the media and most of the Democrats also hold the truths of the free market to be self-evident and scarcely attempt to defend agai nst the attacks on regulation, unions, or government action. On the core issue, the economy, they have abandoned the field of battle to the conservative enemy.

Instead of raising Obamas standard on the right of every American to affordable h ealthcare, his genuine achievement of a healthcare bill was accompanied by a wel ter of bureaucratese that had all the appearance of guaranteeing insurance compa nies profits rather than being a charter for citizens dying in their thousands be cause they could not afford medical services. Polls showed that Americans were p repared to support a single payer system of national or state insurance. What th ey got was a mandatory requirement to pay some of the most bloated, corrupt and inefficient companies around. That being said, those on the far left who do know different are as off-planet a s the GOP. Far too many are prepared to overlook Ron Pauls determination to do aw ay with any social welfare provisions at all and give him elbow room for being o pposed to foreign wars. He would of course have opposed American involvement in the Second World War as well, but then some of the American left would have pick eted the Normandy Landings as foreign intervention. Their insignificance means that this will have negligible electoral effect, but their detachment from real politics in the US has deprived America of a politics able to combat the Chicago school. It is significant that a bunch of anarchists around the Occupy Wall Street protests have done more to push Obama into egalit arian eloquence than the whole Noam Chomskyite left academia. And despite those who prefer Ron Paul to Barack Obama, the President did get mil lions of uninsured on the rolls. He did end the war in Iraq. He has appointed a consumer protection head in the teeth of Republican opposition. On every count, even when disappointing, his record has been better than anything likely from th e gaggle of reactionary Muppets on the other side. So, while any diagnosis of the state of American politics based on the primaries is necessarily gloomy, the prognosis is not so bad. The Republicans are busily making themselves unelectable, while Obama has a real chance to win. And he is by far the least worst option. What is more, if he and the Democrats can get the ir act together, it is possible that they might stave off disaster in Congress b y tapping sane voters revulsion at the ugly face of American conservatism revealed in the ugly contest that is the Republican primary race.