Opinion Editorials, April, 2016

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The elephant is the symbol of US Republican Party and the donkey is the symbol of the US Democratic Party	Republican front runners: Trump and Cruze

US Presidential Election: Escaping the two death options

Donald Trump could change American electoral history for the better. Before explaining how, let’s first explore the politics and predicament of the 2016 Republican primary elections.

About six weeks ago, I projected that Trump would win the Republican nomination. That was before the traditional Republican leadership came out of hibernation to spoil Trump’s chances. It was however, a little too late. It’s almost certain now that Trump will end up with the most delegates at the summer convention – although it might not be enough to give him a simple majority to become the outright Republican nominee at November’s presidential election.

Cultivating the self-righteous

The Republican leadership has no one else to blame for the Trumpmania frenzy. The party had cultivated the extreme right wing of the American electorate for more than 30 years. They had pandered to Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority”, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” and Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party. The Republican leadership was content with the secured right-wing vote for their candidates. They became unsettled, however, when the extremists’ grassroots placed their own to challenge the traditional leadership.

This is universally true in all cases of breeding self-righteous groups to serve a short-term interest of the more dominant party. Once they garner influence, the self-righteous proponents become attracted to power like sharks are drawn to the smell of blood. Ultimately, their illusionary perception of supremacy inspires them to impose their agenda on others.

The US, Israel and the Islamists

In the early 1980s, the Ronald Reagan administration nurtured Islamist ideologues to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. For as long as those fighters were the fuel to serve the US strategy, they were compared by Reagan to the “founding fathers”. But when Reagan’s adopted Islamists became powerful enough to implement their own agenda, conflict ensued.

Israel encouraged the development of alternative Islamist Palestinian leadership in the hope of weakening the more secular Palestine Liberation Organisation. Up until then, the Israeli public didn’t know the meaning of the walking bombs, or suicide bombers, blowing themselves up in the middle of Tel Aviv.

In 1982, Israel dislodged the PLO from Lebanon. It weakened the secular Lebanese national movement and created a vacuum that was soon filled by Hezbollah.

Today, Israel is repeating the same stratagem by collaborating with Al-Qaeda affiliates in the hope of breaking up Syria. In the past – and today – the Zionist movement foresaw the rise of Nazism in Europe as an opportunity to induce Jewish immigration to Palestine. That is until the Nazi experiment went out of control.

It was the same result in all cases regardless of whether the self-righteousness groups were Jewish, Christians or Muslims.

“Death by being shot or poisoning”

To answer my earlier proposition on Trump, traditional Republicans had finally come face to face with the juvenile they reared; and they have come to dislike their creation. At the summer convention, party traditionalists are expected to abandon Trump and unite behind the second least hated alternative: Ted Cruz. Or to quote a Republican leader, to choose between “Death by being shot or poisoning”.

It is very plausible that Trump, with an ego larger than the Republican Party, will end up walking out of the convention. Trump has already hinted that he would recant his pledge to support the Republican candidate if he wasn’t on the November ticket.

If and when Trump decides to break away from the Republican Party, it should be an opportunity for Bernie Sanders to do the same at the Democratic side. Riding Trump’s ego is the best hope for Americans to end the 200-year-old Democratic and Republican monopoly over US presidential elections. The traditionalist against the independent candidates to end the two-party reign.

Sanders has a better chance in the presidential election to halt his party’s retrograde and beat the Democratic traditionalist who was rejected by party voters eight years ago. He could then continue the march to defeat the “shot or poison” death option of the Republican candidates.

A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Digital News. The version here is published by permission of Jamal Kanj.

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org.

editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org