You sure you are pitting the Irish presidential election? 4, 5 and 6 aren’t named Perry, Bachman and Romney, by any chance, are they?
Is number 5 Sarah O’Palin?
Vote for the rich white guy who’ll bend over backward for big business. The US has elected one of them as President in every election for the last 200 years. Luckily now we have a rich black guy who’ll bend over backward for big business.
Well, according to this article, some of the ‘poorest’ presidents that we’ve had lately are Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, and Calvin Coolidge. We might actually want to stick with the richer guys…
Maybe we need to try more ethnicities, though. Any Asians or Hispanics running in Ireland this year?
Do you have write-in candidates over there?
Doesn’t Ireland have a parliamentary system? Does it matter who the president is?
Yes, and not really. It’s nice having a President who doesn’t embarrass us. That would be the main criterion I’d be considering when deciding who to vote for.
Actually, can we put names to these ones? I’ve only been paying attention to McGuinness & Norris really. I’m sure one of the religious fundamentalists must be Gay Mitchell, but I don’t know which. And I presume 5 is Mary Davis, but I’m not sure what she did to demonstrate “not reading up on the role.”
Not officially, but one year a turkey hand puppet got so many write-ins that I heard he actually won in some constituencies.
< chanting > Michael D! Michael D!
I love Michael D. Years back, he was giving a furious, impassioned speech in the Dáil and it took me a while to work out what sounded so off about it. The problem was that he meant every word he was saying. I’d never heard a politician do that before.
Also, we could make him do all his addresses in rhyming couplets, or limericks, or haiku.
Doesn’t the closet FFer have to be that irritating guy off Dragon’s Den?
Ah, of course. Surely he won't make much of an impression though? (One hopes anyway!)
I’m actually torn. I’d prefer Micheal D. to get it, but I’d nearly vote Norris just to make sure McGuinness doesn’t get it.
I figure Michael D and Norris will get all each other’s transfers anyway.
Does the Irish PM actually do anything?
Or is it an office like the US VP-basically a do-nothing job-except that you get to make a fool out of yourself.
I’d be happy enough with Micky D but failing him I’d go with Dave N. By the way since you’re all here when the hell are we having a DubDope? 
Not according to a recent opinion poll anyway - Norris and McGuinness do poorly on transfers. I suppose they’re the most polarising of candidates anyway, if you aren’t for them you’re probably strongly against them.
The PM and the President are two different jobs. The Taoiseach (PM) is the guy in charge. The President basically goes around representing us to other countries - she/he doesn’t have much power.
Interesting about Norris doing badly on transfers, Scathach. I figured he’d get a lot of Michael D’s just to keep the others out.
Wouldn’t the religious fundamentalist be Dana? (I keep forgetting her, in an if-I-ignore-her-maybe-she’ll-disappear kind of way.) And Gay Mitchell is the plank?
Difficult to imagine Gay Mitchell being less conservative than someone, but I don’t know much about Dana’s politics. He’s certainly a plank though.
The key:
- Michael D. Higgins
- David Norris
- Martin McGuinness
- Dana Rosemary Scallon
- Mary Davis
- Gay Mitchell
- Sean Gallagher
Probably going to have to throw a vote to Gallagher, then bounce it to Mitchell then Davis then we’ll see.
Dana is pretty much the full on shield-banging Catholic - IMO Mitchell would be a better choice.
It’s the President, which mostly represents us abroad, and she has several interesting powers.
For instance, the biggest power is the ability to refer legislation to the Supreme Court to test it’s constitutionality - if it is held to be constitutional, then it can never be challenged again.
It is mostly a figurehead role though