A right-wing moment

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The American election showed that a sizeable majority of Americans consider life under an extreme, right-wing administration to be preferable to a more liberal alternative.

We can only assume that the Republican agenda reflects the current preoccupations of the American people. It focussed on several wedge issues -- gay marriages and abortion being among the most emotive.

The party also concentrated on attracting floating voters by playing up the war on terror and the purported threats facing ordinary American citizens. Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Palestine, were presented as part of a complex of issues that impacted directly on the safety of each and every American. And the electorate responded not only by voting Bush back in to the White House, but by giving the Republican Party control of both houses of Congress.

Both parties sought to make political capital out of this fear complex. Bush focussed on the successes of the war on terror, Kerry on its failures. Both attempted to frighten the electorate.

Taxes, unemployment, welfare provision -- indeed, all the issues that once determined elections -- were replaced by lifestyle issues and terrorism. Ohio, which proved decisive in the results of the elections, has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. Despite this the state voted Bush back to the White House.

Liberals within America, indeed, the whole world, will have to look long and hard at this right-wing moment, at the forces that have propelled an extreme right-wing administration into confrontation with the world.

But how are these forces opposed? On what grounds? And when?

These are questions that will need to be answered, and sooner rather than later.