Hopefully Clinton. Enough of this hope and change nonsense-we need some Macht and Ordnung and a politician willing to fight their rivals in the gutter.
List removed. Rubio would be better than Trump or Cruz, which is faint praise, but in general I agree with you about him.
As for the others. I’ve lived in NJ, pre-Christie, and follow its politics reasonably closely, and Christie is far worse as a governor than you might think. Forget bridgegate - he has plenty of other sins. I know lots of people who worked for HP under Fiorina and they universally hate her guts. Most of them got spun off into Agilent and were glad. It is no accident that she never got another CEO job, and even got fired by the McCain campaign. Huckabee and Santorum are both religious fanatics. And morons. Kasich is probably number two. Bush has a wide range of advisers, not all neocons. I suspect he was broadening his appeal in the party ranks. He does not appear to be listening to the neocons at least.
Let’s be clear - even if Jeb! won I’d vote for any plausible Democrat, but I think he’d do the least damage to the country.
In terms of your preferences, or in the scatological sense?
If Trump is the Republican nominee, that means that we only have one real political party in this this country. Since it’s already shameful for a supposedly democratic society to only have two parties with a chance at winning, then I hope the Republicans pick an actual candidate.
I would agree with most of this thread and say that Christie and Kasich are the best of a bad bunch. I completely disagree with both of them on most issues, but I think they would actually try to govern, and not try to institute a theocracy or round up Mexicans or something.
Why not? Sweden did just fine under Social Democratic dominance in the postwar period.
Because it easily might not have been fine, and if there were no other options then Sweden would have been stuck with a terrible party for the length of time it took for another party to gain legitimacy. Look at modern South Africa and Zuma’s antics. But since the ANC is the only game in town, that’s what they’re stuck with. A couple of other parties are only now starting to make gains in response to the problems.
I think a conservative government would be a disaster for the U.S., but that doesn’t mean I don’t want them to run their best candidate and make their case honestly to the nation. There is also value in having minority parties to hold the ruling party accountable and give voice to those in the population who share those views.
I’m also not comfortable with having the democratic party (which, let’s be honest, is right-wing compared to most of the rest of the world) as the only realistic option.
Originally, I was hoping for Jeb?!? to be the GOP nominee- as he was least insane of the bunch. Then Hillary would beat Jeb?!? in a close contest in November.
Then in 2020 the nutball Republican wing would no longer be denied and nominate someone from the clown car. Clown car republican would go down in a Goldwater-type defeat.
Next election Republicans would finally come to their senses, take back their party from nut cases, and would nominate a sane candidate in 2024. Especially since there is no way Democrats could win 5 presidential elections in a row.
Now I don’t know. Jeb?!? seems to have inexplicably crashed and burned, Christie is too heavy to get off the ground, and Rubio unable to find to even find his wings, so far. That leaves the foolish daredevil Trump and kamikaze Cruz, either would be a Hindenburg disaster for the country if elected. But somebody has to win the nomination, and a fiery flame out in 2016 would likely lead to Republicans nominating a sane candidate in 2020.
One thought that crossed my mind this morning was: if Cruz gets the nomination, then there’s really no way the right wing would be able to say the GOP didn’t run a true conservative this time.
After LBJ steamrollered Goldwater in 1964, the GOP moved back towards the center. Not ‘to’ the center; just ‘towards’ it.) Think that would happen if Cruz got crushed in the general election? Me either. True conservatism cannot fail; it can only be failed. Conservatives would come up with some excuse about why it wasn’t Cruz’ or conservatism’s fault that he lost, and they’d keep on dragging the party rightward.
I think we’ll be much better off if the GOP flames out and a new two-party system coalesces around the DNC/Hillary (conservative) and progressive/Sanders (liberal) factions.
In terms of cynical political calculation, for the GOP to nominate a candidate who isn’t a movement conservative (especially after a candidate who is a movement conservative came in second) keeps them weak by insuring that they’ll spend another election cycle hatching plans and ordering parts for them from the ACME catalog.
That would be nice, but the angry Foxified voters will still be a major force for quite some time. They’ll keep the GOP alive for quite some time, even if it never again wins the White House.
I like the way you think.