Ayoon Wa Azan (In All Countries, People Vote With Their Pockets In Mind)

Today is Super Tuesday, or the day when the Republicans vote in ten U.S. states for their candidate for the U.S. Presidency. Although the day will not end with the contest having been settled once and for all, I believe it highly likely that Mitt Romney will remain ahead of the other contenders, not because he is the best candidate, but because he is the least bad among them. In fact, this is what has made many prominent Republicans in Congress and outside rally around Romney on the eve of the vote. The traditional leadership of the Republican Party wants their candidate to be Romney, so much so that I read that the results of the ballot among the party members in the state of Maine were rigged in favor of Romney – i.e. in line with the Arabs’ style in rigging their election results. Perhaps the GOP leadership realizes that Romney is not an ideal candidate for the presidency, but that he is the best one available. Indeed, the competition is now confined between him and Rick Santorum, with Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul trailing behind. If Barack Obama was given the opportunity to choose his Republican rivals, he would not have found anyone better than those to run against him, and I insist that the President can beat any of them individually, and perhaps even all of them combined. What matters are economic performance and the candidates’ understanding of the economy, and what solutions will they have for the ongoing financial crisis. After he won the primaries in Arizona and Michigan near the end of last month, Romney chose to propose an equal tax rate for everyone. However, the Tax Policy Center said that Romney’s proposals would increase the deficit by three trillion dollars. Although Romney is a multimillionaire, the press discovered that he pays a rate of only 19 percent as income tax for an annual income of 21 million dollars. Then he barely opens his mouth without putting his foot in it, i.e. blundering as the English saying means. In response to Obama’s question about how America got into the economic crisis, Romney said that this happened because Obama was elected president. However, the U.S. economy was losing 750 thousand jobs each month in 2007 under the Republican administration of George W. Bush, while it is now adding 200 thousand jobs per month under Obama. Furthermore, Romney himself had admitted in a televised statement only two weeks earlier that the economy is improving. Rick Santorum, on the other hand, is a skilled speaker and an intelligent man who memorizes numbers and facts. However, he is on the far right of a right-wing party, and his stances border on fascism in a country like the United States. For instance, he is opposed to gay relations and contraception, and believes that global warming is a hoax. He also claims that universities are liberal bastions that brainwash students to get rid of their Christian faith. He supports a war on radical Islam, and wants a military strike against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. He even claims that Satan is at war with America, and said that he almost throws up when hears about the need for the separation of church and state, although this is at the heart of the system of government in the United States. Then there is Newt Gingrich, who is a walking and talking scandal. His financial and personal scandals are widely circulated and known, to which we can perhaps add his ‘scandal of the day’, since he is running in the primary elections with the media hungry for all news about him. The last thing I read about him is that he was closely involved with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two government-backed real estate banks that had incurred some of the highest losses in the aftermath of the U.S. and global financial crises. It turns out Gingrich worked as a consultant for Freddie Mac and collected 1.9 million dollars from the bank since 1999. It was also revealed that he had defended both banks in Congress when he was MP and then as Speaker of the House. The physician Ron Paul is the best among the Republican contenders. He is for reducing government interference in people’s lives and opposes foreign wars, but he is supported by youths exclusively, and has no hope to win the nomination for the party or indeed the presidency after that. On the other side of those Republican contenders, there is Barack Obama, who is scandal-free, whether these scandals are financial or sexual in nature. Recent public opinion polls have shown that he is ahead of his Republican rivals, amid consensus that the U.S. economy has begun to recover. With jobs being added each month, unemployment levels have declined, and manufacturing output and retail sales have increased. The Federal Reserve Bank (the central bank) meanwhile has issued a positive encouraging report on the U.S. economy. Americans and people in all countries vote with their pockets in mind.