Lectura 4:00 min
A crucial election
Is our giant neighbor to the north about to shoot itself in the foot? It would seem so, for virtually all credible polls show that Republicans are poised to regain control of the House, a midterm election result that will undermine not only the weak U.S. recovery but the Obama presidency as well.
It is clearly, an age of intolerance and misguided impatience. The electorate, overwhelmed by a faltering economy and joblessness, was unable to grasp that most of todays economic woes were caused by the very Republicans they are ushering right back into office.
Despite repeated admonitions to the contrary, it seems the citizenry was expecting Obama to wield a magic wand to make the recession vanish. Beyond the valid discussion of whether the president did not do enough in the way of rescue efforts, the fact remains that two years has not been enough to undo all the wrongs, and that Obama simply did not get the benefit of the doubt for getting the economy back on track.
For Mexico and the rest of Latin America, Republican gains will not be good news. Not only is immigration reform going to get pushed further back, no matter what Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada promises, but other crucial issues such as trade and assistance in the drug wars will be hopelessly relegated.
Acute disagreements between Democrats and Republicans on the budget deficit, health care, the war in Afghanistan and others, will only push the Mexican and Latin American agenda to near the bottom of the list of priorities. Republicans in general and Tea Partiers in particular are likely to be more protectionist, something that does not bode well for Mexico, which recently surpassed Canada as the number two U.S. trading partner.
Thus, whatever hopes the Mexican government had of getting Washington to eliminate the restrictions to Mexican trucks, agreed to 16 years ago under NAFTA, will have to wait for better times.
If the GOP takes the House as widely anticipated, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida is ready, willing and able to take over the influential Foreign Affairs Committee, something that could drastically alter the administrations agenda.
If the Cuban-born legislator does take over at the helm, she is likely to scuttle the drive to ease sanctions and travel restrictions on Cuba, which Chairman Howard Berman, the California Democrat, supports. Ros-Lehtinen is an active member of the Cuban American lobby.
Analysts agree that her ascendancy could spell doom for Bermans bill on foreign-aid reform. She argues often for more vetting of foreign aid in the hope of finding cuts, and she has also introduced legislation to cut U.S. funding for the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority.
Conservatives deny that a Republican resurgence should be cause for concern. After all, the last time Republicans were in control of Congress with a Democratic president in the White House, was from early 1995 to the end of 2000. Remember, those Clinton years were good times, with steady job creation and responsible budgets. The point is, can anyone hope for a similar experience now?
No way, say the liberals. Some venture that future historians will likely look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for the United States and its partners including Mexico, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.
A little over a decade ago, Republicans and Democrats were able to work together on some issues. President Obama believe that the same thing can happen again today. In a recent interview with National Journal, he sounded a conciliatory note, saying that Democrats need to have an appropriate sense of humility, and that he would spend more time building consensus. The crux of the problem today is that Republicans are simply not in a conciliatory mood.
Their main target today is to make Obama a one-term president.
