I have nothing against vetting prospective Republican candidates running for President in 2016.
Still, I find myself agreeing more with the sentiments of those commentators who say: “The more the merrier.” Nor do I believe that the Republican Party presidential prospectus has not turned into a clown car. Granted, I have publicly endorsed Scott Walker, already a compelling front runner without announcing his candidacy. He can ride a hog and tie up the pork in Wisconsin without blinking, who defeated public sector unions, expanded school choice, cut taxes, enacted Voter ID, passed right-to-work, and is boning up on foreign policy. Yet, Walker aside, I could vote for Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul without hesitating. Even Marco Rubio would be a vast improvement over anything that this country has endured for eight years.
The fact that there are so many qualified (in the true sense of the word) Republicans running for president commands a great deal of respect. Where Washington has failed, the states’ Republican governors have succeeded, and remind the nation what the Framers always knew – power belongs to the states and the people.
What a wonderful turn from 2012, where the strongest contender (Romney) was a weak frontrunner, all the way to April. Even I begged for a brokered convention, so that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels could take the reins of the party and challenge Obama. Oh well. We got Romney, Romney-care, and five million Republicans who didn’t vote.
This time, I am not saddened at the wide, deep, and impressive bench facing the Republican primary voters in 2016. Even though I have faulted Christie, Carson, and
And speaking of the Democratic Party, consider the array of clowns, losers, and misfits running for (or ruining) the Democratic Party nomination.
All old and white, bereft of ideas and wit, they have legacies of folly and failure. If you want a clown car, look no further than the Water Boys of politics, the Dems running under the shadow of Obama, his foreign morass, and his domestic agenda, completely in tatters, and teetering on collapse as life-long Democrats bolt to the GOP.
Instead of picking on why certain Republicans are running, a better to question to ask:
Why are any Democrats running at all?
Let’s start with “Weekend at Bernie” Sanders. An old codger from Vermont, an Independent in Name Only, a self-avowed socialist who wrote about illicit fantasies, he preaches “Let others live within your means,” all while owning property himself. No one better represents the old, desiccated socialism of the 1970s than Bernie Sanders. Yes, young people love him, the same way the love their grandpas or weird uncle, only to take his money away when he dies, or falls asleep. With Bernie, can anyone ever tell the difference?
Then there’s Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. He entered the race within weeks of the Old Line State’s bruising racial flare-ups. Baltimore went up in flames, in large part from decades of liberal, Democratic policies, brought to a head by O’Malley, who turned Maryland into a progressive dystopia, from gender neutral bathrooms, to havens for illegal aliens and gun-grabbing galore. As for the Obamacare state exchange, Maryland’s was one of the first to fail. This man taxed the rain – no joke! So unpopular was O’Malley (and his bevy of levies), that voters Democratic, Independent, black and white, turned on his appointed successor Anthony Brown. Today, Republican Larry Hogan holds the Governor’s mansion in Annapolis cutting taxes, beefing up the budget, and now reaching out to black voters. Heck of a Job, there, Marty!
Who else? Oh, yeah, that governor from Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee.
Wow, this guy is a gaffe a minute. “Governor Gump” to Ocean State residents, Rhode Islanders despised him so much, he had a whopping 27% approval rating before declining to run for reelection. An inconsistent political chameleon, he was appointed to the US Senate after his father’s untimely death in 1999, then won election . . .as a Republican, in his own right (even though he was one of the most left-wing members of the Senate). After one term, in which he voted against his party more than Hillary Clinton (wow, but more on Hillary in a minute), Chafee lost in 2006. Switching to liberal Independent in 2007, he won as Rhode Island governor with 33.3% + 1 of the vote. Not a commensurate mandate by any stretch.
Presiding over economic malaise in the midst of food-stamp cities, gun-grabbing failures, attacks on the state Christmas Tree, and a spate of corrupt politicians going to jail, Chafee identified the following as his political legacies: gay marriage (which never brought in the economic boom he claimed it would), rescinding E-verify (money for illegals, but no one else), and the Obamacare state exchange (which even Rhode Island Democrats are trying to get rid of).
He also wanted to legalize marijuana to fix the state’s stumbling, crumbling infrastructure: “Pot for potholes.” To echo the hilarious refrain of Rhode Island’s conservative news program “Common Sense”: “Are you kidding me?!”
Then there’s Hillary Clinton. From Benghazi to “Clinton Cash,” from the husband’s “I did not do that to that woman” to her own “What difference does it make?” Clinton is crashing rather than cashing in on her political dynasty. Iowa Democrats want someone more progressive (or regressive), she refuses to answer questions, and she cannot operate two email accounts – or is it that she cannot tell the truth, even when it doesn’t hurt her?
From the creepy uncles to the dysfunctional cousins, to the Democratic Madam who does not seem to give a damn, calling the Democratic slate of Presidential contenders “a clown car of candidates” is too kind. Perhaps a broken family, a coven of criminals. How about the best title: Unelectable?
Republicans should not rip each other up over “Why so many?” prospective GOP standard-bearer in 2016. Let’s laugh at the Democrats’ diminished denizens, and ask: “Why do they even bother?”