GOP Primary. US capitalism's political contradictions.

With god on his side.

Gingrich has won the Republican race in South Carolina. This causes a major headache for what the capitalist mass media call the Republican "establishment." By this is meant the top capitalists, top 1%, element in the Party. These people do not want Gingrich, they are afraid of what he might do. They are like a person who has a mad watch dog and while this is okay as long as the watchdog is chained they are afraid of what might happen if it broke loose. And Gingrich's ego is so big, his willingness to whip up racism with coded language so prevalent the big capitalist powers in and out of the Republican party are worried about him.

But they have a serious problem. To get the Republicans into power in the past they whipped up the born again christian right vote. (See Friday's blog) These christian right voters are mainly middle or working class. And they do not respond well to Romneys glorification of capitalism. 6 out of 10 voters in the SC primary were born again or evangelical Christians. It is this base that gives the mad dog his base and which drives him to his extreme racists codes and anti poor rants.

Romney undoubtedly still looks better to the big capitalist forces, the 1%, as he defends so called private enterprise. Gingrich also frightens the 1% with his willingness to attack Romney on his capitalist swindles in order to get votes. However Romney's stupidity seems to know no bounds. At a time like this when capitalism is so unpopular to make himself the candidate of capitalism is just about unthinkable. With the reluctant support of the Republican establishment Romney may still win the nomination but if he does he will be badly battered. His tax returns are still to come out. Of course Gingrich's ethics reports from when he was kicked out of his leadership role in congress and fined $300,000 are still to come out. Whoever the Republican candidate is will most likely come limping into the battle with Obama well bruised.

Of course Obama could come into the general election with an economy plunging into a new downturn and this could undermine him.

As we have said in this blog in the past US capitalism is in a weak position politically. But what it still has is its political monopoly. This is intact because the union leaders will not break from the Democrats and build a mass workers party and this allows US capitalism to maintain its political monopoly. But that monopoly is increasingly frayed and tattered and threatens to spin out of control or act in a way that will mobilize forces that are not useful to it - such as openly mass racists forces or openly pro-capitalist or openly anti capitalist propaganda.

It is likely the big capitalist powers will now move to try and stop Gingrich. But can they reign in their mad dog and his born again racist base? If they do they will most likely be left with the extreme right Romney who is popular with about nobody. It is going to be a hard slog for capitalism to get somebody they trust from the Republican Party into the White House. They might have to stop talking in their racist code about "getting their country back" and support Obama after all. He has been serving them pretty good so far.

Sean.