Compared with John McCain's campaign three years ago, the Grand Old Party has moved even farther to the right. Herman Cain, now leading some polls in the race for the nomination, had to clarify that he was joking when he said he wanted to build a lethal electrified fence along the entire border with Mexico. As for global warming, most Republicans say that there is no such thing, or that if the Earth really is warming it has nothing to do with human activity. Another candidate, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, has called global warming a “contrived phoney mess that is falling apart under its own weight”. The party’s shift on economics is no less striking. The big-government conservatism of George Bush’s presidency is seen not only as a mistake but as a betrayal. George Bush senior is remembered no more fondly. Didn’t his decision to break a promise and raise taxes lose the Republicans the White House in 1992?
On the face of it, this shift to the right has already paid dividends. In the presidential election three years ago Barack Obama romped to victory with 365 electoral-college votes, 192 more than Mr McCain, and almost 53% of the popular vote. Since then, however, the Republicans have experienced an almost miraculous resurrection.
In the mid-terms of November 2010 they won control of the House of Representatives, an extra six seats in the Senate and six more state governorships, bringing the total number of state houses under Republican management to 29 out of 50. They have an excellent chance in November next year of capturing the Senate, and a fair chance of grabbing the White House, turning Mr Obama into the first one-term president since George Bush senior. An average of polls maintained by RealClearPolitics, a website, suggests that 44.8% of voters intend to vote for a Republican in 2012 and 41.8% for Mr Obama. To a degree, they owe this turnaround to luck—Mr Obama’s bad luck.
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