The Indian Panorama

Tag: Republican

  • Narrowing field: On 2024 U.S. presidential election’s Republican primaries race

    Trump’s ad hoc policymaking has many takers among Republicans

    The 2024 U.S. presidential election’s Republican primaries race has already narrowed to two candidates, frontrunner and former President Donald Trump and former Governor of South Carolina, Indian-origin Nikki Haley. The latest twist in the election cycle saga, which kicked off last week with the Iowa caucuses, saw Florida Governor Ron DeSantis step off the contest after he admitted that he could not see a path to victory. Both he and Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceuticals entrepreneur who exited the race earlier, have endorsed Mr. Trump, who leads by double digits, 50% to Ms. Haley’s 39% among likely Republican voters, in New Hampshire, the next Republican primary venue. In Iowa, he garnered 20 delegates to Ms. Haley’s eight, a wide margin, even if he has a long road ahead to acquire the 1,215 delegates necessary to capture the nomination. While there are no presidential debates on the cards at this time because Mr. Trump has refused to join them, the tenor of the remarks by the two candidates against their rival appeared to be getting sharper. Ms. Haley questioned Mr. Trump’s mental fitness to hold high office after he seemed to confuse her with former House of Representatives Speaker and Democrat Nancy Pelosi, in the context of the January 6, 2021 riots. Mr. Trump has mocked her first name Nimrata and, in an echo of the birther movement remarks he made against former President Barack Obama, implicitly questioned whether she was a natural-born U.S. citizen.

    Unlike previous U.S. elections, such as in 2016, where there were no fewer than 10 candidates in the fray during the presidential debates, this time a considerable skew in voter preferences towards Mr. Trump is evident, leading to a lopsided primaries season. Ms. Haley is only likely to remain in the race for as long as she is able to raise sufficient funds to keep her campaign going, and donors are notoriously quick to pull out when they see a dead end for a candidate, regardless of their political leanings. The wholesale rush towards the aura of Trumpism, now apparently an ever-growing force despite Mr. Trump facing serious criminal indictments and other legal challenges, has in fact fractured mainstream Republicanism as a bulwark of the U.S. conservative movement. Voters now appear to prefer Mr. Trump’s chaotic ad hocism in policymaking, his aggressive views on immigration and minorities of all hues, and his relentless eschewing of political propriety even when dealing with institutional issues. Unless there is an impulse for new leadership within the Grand Old Party to challenge the Trump “paradigm”, the sheer lack of alternative voices with populist appeal will lead to Trumpism deepening its hold on U.S. institutions, governance and socio-economic outcomes.
    (The Hindu)

  • State of affairs: On Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address

    • United States President Joe Biden knows he must focus on both the U.S. economy and global challenges

    In his second State of the Union address, U.S. President Joe Biden tried to articulate several messages under one big theme — his administration was committed to rebuilding America’s economy while standing up to its challenges abroad. Much of the 72-minute speech was on the domestic agenda, particularly his economic optimism. The speech saw self-appreciation, ideas and rhetoric — he took pride in his economic policies, emphasizing the low unemployment rate and easing inflation, repeated the calls for taxing the super rich and bringing down prices of essential drugs, promised not to cut Social Security and Medicare and declared that democracies have become stronger and autocracies weaker.

    While there was no major policy shift, the 80-year-old President repeated the phrase “finish the job”, indicating that he needed more time to build on what he has already done — seen as a pitch for his re-election campaign. Mr. Biden also referred to Russia and China as key foreign policy challenges — the Ukraine invasion as “a test for America”, and that America “will act to protect our country” if its sovereignty is threatened, an indirect reference to the balloon incident.

    If Mr. Biden used the speech to defend his legacy and lay his vision, it also laid bare his administration’s critical challenges. To be sure, the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since 1969 — to 3.4% in January 2023 — and inflation continued to ease in the month. Still, most Americans (58% as in a recent survey), burdened by high energy prices and slow growth in wages, remain unhappy with his handling of the economy. The President may have plans for re-election, but only 37% Democrats back him. Mr. Biden will also face growing resistance to his policies from Congress in a Republican-controlled House.

    On foreign policy, the U.S. has so far stood resolutely behind Ukraine, but, as the war grinds on, there are rising questions about a possible endgame. A bigger challenge for Mr. Biden is how to handle ties with China at a time when the two superpowers compete for global influence. The balloon incident suggests that it is not an easy task. Half of Mr. Biden’s first term is over. As the election season is heating up, time is running short and his task is cut out — he has to act more decisively on the economic front if he wants to build a fair order of competition and opportunities, work towards ending the war in Ukraine without compromising on America’s standing in Europe, and put in place stronger guardrails in U.S.-China relations to check an escalation in tensions and deterioration in ties.

    (The Hindu)

  • George Santos Faces Calls to Resign

    George Santos Faces Calls to Resign

    WESTBURY, N.Y. (TIP): Dozens of Republican officials in New York State, including four recently elected congressmen, urged Representative George Santos, on Wednesday, January 11, to resign in a fracturing of local party support for Mr. Santos. Their call represented a sharp break from congressional Republican leaders, who insisted they would not push the embattled congressman to resign. Even as Mr. Santos’s former allies in New York insisted that his fabrications on the campaign trail had significantly violated the public trust, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that he not only would resist calls to push Mr. Santos out, but that he planned to seat him on a congressional committee.

    “The voters elected him to serve,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters in Washington, adding that Mr. Santos “has to answer to the voters and the voters can make another decision in two years.”

    Mr. Santos, who was elected to represent New York’s Third Congressional District, a consequential swing district in Queens and Long Island, emphatically resisted calls to leave office, saying on Twitter that he remained committed to serving the people of his district.

    The Nassau County party chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., said that Mr. Santos, a first-term Republican, had lost the support of Republicans in his district, saying that Mr. Santos’s campaign was one of “deceit, lies, fabrication.”

    “He’s disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople,” Mr. Cairo said at the news conference. “Today, on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I am calling for his immediate resignation.”

    (Source: agencies)