From Democrat to Republican

Mar 18, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – An old thread could be reweaving its way back into U.S. politics.  It’s a foreign thread; one with a dagger tied at the end.  Though time and aging may induce forgetfulness, a top Democrat had his head handed to him, with feet flying, a while back.  Now, the question is whether that same sticky, unshakeable thread will connect to a top Republican and tumble him from his impregnable, untouchable heights.

From 45 years ago, I exhume James Earl Carter, a peanut farmer cum nuclear engineer from hardline Georgia who took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania, when he became president of the United States.  Only in America, as they say.  In his run for a second term in the White House, the mullahs in Tehran (the same Iran) held the cards that mattered.  Remember those 66 hostages, and the global embarrassment for superpower America.  America made to look third-rate by a group of obstinate men in flowing robes running out of control in the desert.  Jimmy Carter paid a price for helicopter failure, for dead U.S. Servicemen, and for the outrage felt by Americans over their seeming helplessness.  The hostage situation in Iran was one of the straws that broke the back of the reelection chances of President Carter.  A thoughtful man, but not tough enough leader to get the job done.  Off with their heads, would have pleased the impatient hawks.  He lost his own head, and any chance of a second term.

Reports were that Republican operatives had a hand in the timing of the release of those hostages.  It was eerie, and carried more than a whiff of the powerful in its path.  What was suspicious, sinister.  And Un-American.  Carter wasn’t even allowed the dignity of the 66 U.S. hostages released under his watch, to give him the best going away he could have imagined.  They were held up beyond the last agonising minutes of his up-and-down presidency.  Then those battered and bewildered were set free into the welcoming and loving embrace of the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan.  From Hollywood to Macbeth’s Birnam Wood in one giant leap.

Republicans say it didn’t happen.  Senior Iranians said that it did.  The U.S. Congress, through the work of various sub-committees, said it wasn’t so sure.  Then, it was held in some circles that the Iran Contra arms deal, with Robert MacFarlane leading the charge, was Reagan’s payback for what has been called the October Surprise.  Conspiracy theory?  The sour grapes of sore losers, Democrats?  Or the extraordinarily farfetched figments of overactive imaginations?  For me, the timing of the release was a little too neat, too sweet, and definitely too tight.  Looks like they were held back, so there was a push to ensure that President Carter got that one last kick to send him sailing out of the White House.  Out with a lovable Democrat, in with an even cheerier Republican.

Now Iran is back again in the picture.  Big, Bad, Beautiful, Donald Trump decided that Iran had to be taught a lesson it wouldn’t forget.  Preemptive strikes to derail planned attacks on U.S. assets and U.S. allies.  Like President Carter, President Trump is discovering that Iran is a tough nut.  One that doesn’t rollover.  One that defies the odds, is hard to crack.  The longer this ‘massive military operation’ aka war lasts, the more the U.S. economy is threatened, and the more the U.S. midterm elections become a cliffhanger.  Democrats are knocking on the door, with visions, and within a whisker, of sending the Republicans under, and taking over Congress.  The Iran Factor looms large.  A grim picture, it is, for Republican watchers.  What President Trump thought was Desert Storm II (overpowering, lightning fast, and back to golfing) suddenly isn’t that kind of picnic, anymore.  Not yet quagmire; but purgatory stirring.  In Iran.  For the U.S.  for Republicans at the November polls.  Better hurry up and get this danged war over.  The spinners can takeover then, work their magic, and declare who won.

I don’t think anyone did.  Iran battered.  The world bruised.  International law shredded.  (Vladimir Putin said it best: int’l law is dead).  U.S. presidency wounded.  Republicans suspended.  The challenge is how to pick up the pieces.  I struggle to locate those pieces.  Size of them, their identities.  Serious, probably irreversible, damage done.  It’s 1979-80 repeated in 2026.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Democrat, GHK Lall, Republican, U.S. politics

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