“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency
of this globalized and expansive empire is—and I mean this seriously—the
greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” wrote Fidel
Castro in a recent opinion piece.
Though all capitalist politicians have little to nothing in
common with the vast majority of poor and working people in the United States,
a brief overview of this year’s two leading Republican primary candidates
demonstrates that they are possibly the most out of touch slate of candidates
ever.
Mitt Romney, the dominant front runner, has absurdly claimed
that “corporations are people,” and that “everything corporations earn
ultimately goes to the people.” As of 2007, he holds an estimated net worth of
$202 million, including over $120 million in blind trusts, $42.9 million in
IRAs and $18.7 million each in cash and property values. This comes at a time
when inflation-adjusted median household income in 2011 stood at just $49,909.
After much public outcry, Romney finally released his 2010 tax
return, revealing an income of $21.6 million, more than half of which came from
capital gains. However, in 2006, Romney brought in a whopping $37.6 million,
prior to selling off dozens of stocks that his campaign advisors considered
“politically sensitive.”
To put this into perspective, in the United States only 1.5
percent of the population earns more than $250,000 a year, while less than 0.1
percent earn over $1 million each year.
The Romney campaign has estimated that Romney will pay $3.2
million in taxes for 2011 when he files in April, for an effective tax rate of
15.4 percent—a far lower rate than what the average worker pays.
Meanwhile, at a time when most people in the United States
are struggling to simply make ends meet, Newt Gingrich is outrageously
discussing plans to inhabit the moon.
“By the end of my second term, we will have the first
permanent base on the moon, and it will be American,” said Gingrich in the Jan.
26 debate in Jacksonville, Fla.
Gingrich has also led the pack for the most offensive and
virulently racist comments on a host of issues. An ardent supporter of Zionism
and defender of the state of Israel, Gingrich has stated that the Palestinian
nationality was “invented” in the 1970s.
In a 2007 speech, Gingrich exposed his racist views saying
that “we should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people
learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of
prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.”
Furthermore, Gingrich, while not as obscenely wealthy as
Romney, had momentarily taken front-runner status in the primaries due to the
financial contributions of the ultra-wealthy through the use of super-PACs.
Sheldon Adleson, the eighth richest person in the United States with an estimated
$21.5 billion in net worth, recently contributed $10 million to Gingrich’s
campaign. (Business Week, Jan. 26)
As the track records of these two candidates clearly
demonstrate, the success of political candidates in the United States is solely
based on representing the interests of the 1%, while standing in opposition to
the interests of the 99%.