By Ronald Austin
The nature of American politics in the past made it possible for a politician to take a principled position on an issue if he felt that it was in the best interest of his party and country. In signing the Civil Rights Act in 1965 Lyndon Johnson said that the Democrats would lose the South for the next ten years.
Johnson had rejected the siren racial voices in his own party and affirmed the rights of Black American citizens. We have come a long way from this kind of politics. It can already be detected that even before the platform of the Republican Party has been written the identified candidate, Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney, is a prisoner of the powerful conservative movement which has captured that party. Romney does not seem driven by a personal agenda. He is prepared to appease this movement over a range of issues. But this should not have come as any major surprise. As early as the beginning of the Republican primaries Romney was determined to capture the glittering prize of the White House and the governance of the American state. If the road to this holy grail has to be labyrinthine, then so be it. This adherent of the Mormon religion will endure the taunts of flip-flopping and being unprincipled by the liberals once his goal is achieved. Experienced politician that he is, Romney saw a way of getting to the White House via a road carved by America’s economic crisis, a strong conservative tide, and a confederacy of rich men intent on dismissing the first Afro-American President of the United States. The auspices for their victory have never been this good.
During the primaries to select the Republican candidate, Romney was widely regarded as being insufficiently conservative. Those opposed to him such as Rick Santorum and the
