America’s election year
For all his flaws, Mitt Romney is ultimately a political pragmatist.
In the end, it came down to just eight votes. Willard Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in the primary race for the Republican Party’s nomination for the US presidency finally eked out a win in Iowa, the first state to vote in the year-long process that Americans go through for choosing their president. That it came this close is a testament to just how skewed preferences have become at the right-wing of the US political spectrum. There was a time when Mitt Romney would have been the heir-apparent, coasting his way to a nomination for being one of the most moderate and electable candidates. Yet, he has been forced to disavow his single biggest policy achievement as the governor of Massachusetts — offering almost universal healthcare to the residents of the state — and forced to take on social positions that he very likely does not believe in. And even then, the Republican electorate spent months keeping him in second place to virtually every other candidate in the race. Indeed, the man whom Romney narrowly beat out is so despised by a wide segment of the US electorate that his name has been made synonymous with something that cannot be discussed in print. While our own politics is more than enough to keep most Pakistanis occupied, the complicated alliance with the United States means that the race for the American presidency matters to Pakistan. While none of the candidates vying to oppose President Barack Obama in November this year have any particular love for Pakistan, some have more dangerous ideas than others. Newt Gingrich, for instance, seems to see no nuance in the war on terrorism and sees it as an existential struggle between two religions.
For all his flaws, Mitt Romney is ultimately a political pragmatist. We cannot say with any certainty whether or not he will win the White House, or even his own party’s nomination. But we do expect him to calmly weigh policy options before making decisions about the US relationship with Pakistan. In this time of crisis, that is the best that we in Pakistan can hope for from an American politician.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 7th, 2012.
He has a long way to go and unlikely to win the support of all republicans in Nov general election. Despite republican antics, Obama is still popular among voters and his campaign is flushed with cash.