Danger Still Lurks in the Corridors of Power

"You wrote a concession?”

“Of course I wrote a concession. What you want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?”

“No.”

“Then go outside turn around three times and spit.”

West Wing: Season 4 – Election Day

So, Election Day 2012 has come and gone and President Obama has been re-elected, cruising to victory with 332 to 206 electoral votes. The pollsters had seen this result coming for a while – this election has been called a triumph for science – but for me I think it was confirmed when I heard that Romney had not bothered to write a concession speech. The above quote from the West Wing immediately sprung to mind.

Always have a concession speech, for the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing is mighty and terrible.

But despite the fact that Romney has lost and will now hopefully fade into obscurity, I am still worried, about the future of America. For it was not Romney’s economic policies or even his foreign policies that worried me, but his social policy. Or, rather, the social policies that would have been forced on him by a Tea Party Congress.

I was recently informed of a book called The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood. In it the US has been replaced with the Republic of Gilead, a patriarchal society where women are considered second class citizens, good for nothing more than reproduction. While I am not saying that is what would have happened, I could see the US under President Romney and a Tea Party Congress going in a similar direction.

I was seeing borders tightened as fear and racism took hold, the defence budget going up while the war hawks’ eyes turned towards Iran, Obamacare overturned, social security and Medicaid gutted to pay for another round of unnecessary tax cuts for the one percent. I saw the Supreme Court packed with enough conservative justices to overturn Roe v Wade and all the other steps that have been made to make America a more open and accepting nation. I was seeing social policy and civil rights in the US set back twenty years or more.

The poster boy for this may have been defeated, the rape denying Akin and Mourdock may have lost their election bids. But while the likes of Michelle Bachmann; Paul Ryan and Doug Lambourn are the still in the House, while Rush Limbaugh still holds sway over millions of Americans, while there is anyone left in a position of authority who supports the opinion than an Obama victory marks the death of liberty and freedom in America, then the job is not done. Not by a long chalk. The Tea Party and its backwards, nineteenth century ways need to be exercised from Congress quickly. The Moderates within the GOP need to take this as an opportunity to take their party back from the fringe right.

The Jabberwock of Fear that Mitt Romney represented may have been defeated, but the people that put him there in the first place still exist. And until they have been removed, America will never properly heal.