So I told a friend the other day that I was planning to say something about the Republican presidential field, and then thought today that I might as well do it now. Some of these names are going to start disappearing, and so now’s my chance.
The first category below would be candidates that I could see myself voting for under a defined set of circumstances. The second category is the reverse of that — candidates I couldn’t see myself voting for under any reasonable scenario.
One important proviso, one that needs repeating every election cycle, is that electoral perfectionism is the enemy of all sane governance. At the same time, electoral pragmatism is the enemy of every possible reform. I am a theocratic libertarian, and consequently I am sure we will have ample time to discuss why my “no way” list isn’t a lot longer. Cool your baby jets. That time will come soon enough.
Did I mention that I have a grandson who will be voting in this presidential election? This should make you think of me as an éminence grise among the pundits, preparing to share my wisdom. Did that help prepare your heart for what you are about to read?
I will list the candidates in the appropriate order, and make a tantalizingly brief comment about each. The rankings are a combination of how much I sync with their views and how electable I think they are.
In each category, I have listed them in my order of preference, or disapprobation, as the case may be. With all of them, there are issues that have me holding my nose, which is the way it will always be unless I write in Aragorn, heir of Isildur.
Possibles
Cruz — on general issues across the board, I find myself in agreement with Cruz the most.
Walker — good on public unions, and clearly has backbone. Shame about his sons earholing him on the same sex mirage issue.
Bush — I believe Bush is an honest man, and a lot of the opposition to him is simply irrational. I want to keep him on the list simply because of the nature of the yelling against him.
Paul — I like his approach on issues relating to the surveillance state, and he annoys some of the right people.
Rubio — I like him on some of the fundamentals (e.g. pro-life), but he makes me think too much of the boys in the back room.
Jindal — not much chance, but if he got in position, I would take a look.
Perry — not much money, and not much chance, but there would be worse things than a Texas sized economy that was bigger than Texas.
Carson — his black and white approach is refreshing on some issues and appalling on others. Oh, well.
Huckabee — when I had the privilege of interviewing Huckabee a week or so ago, I was pleasantly surprised at how radical he was on the pro-life issue. I can put up with a lot in exchange for that, which is exactly what I would be doing.
Santorum — I could see my way to vote for him, but he needs to reflect on how Harold Stassen became Harold Stassen.
Fiorina — I put her in this list, but honestly don’t know enough about her yet to say anything. If she continues to rise in the pack, I will endeavor to climb up the hill of my ignorance to see if I can see any better from there.
Gilmore — same here, although I don’t see any way that he could possibly continue on. I don’t know what he could possibly be doing. Maybe he is auditioning for a gig selling reversible home mortgages.
Impossibles
Trump — this gentleman has an ego best viewed from a helicopter. And surveying his positions over time has me thinking that if he is in any way conservative, then I am king of the Hottentots.
Christie — his joiysy-brash was fun at first. Then it wasn’t.
Kasich — we need someone to pursue the Kasich form of compassionate conservatism in the Oval Office like we need a sucking chest wound. And we already got one of those.
Graham — he is a one-trick foreign policy pony, and the pony is bad at the trick. And anybody who could pull the Planned Parenthood Senate vote stunt is someone who should have a permanent exhibit in the Hall of Lame.
Pataki — he was governor of New York for years, and those people back there didn’t try to impeach him. Obviously disqualified.
That Harold Stassen line is pure gold.
The demographic replacement of Americans supported by the majority of the names on your list means that we will have a de facto one party state within the next one to two election cycles. I think that they are aware of this and you might question what that says about these candidates and their motivations.
Anyway, no longer my circus, no longer my monkeys.
What is the map you’ve got there?
First off, none of this matters the way we’re used to thinking it matters, since a Democrat is going to be President next. That said — I’m sure it’s a much less obvious issue in Idaho, but immigration is the only political battle worth fighting right now. ¡Jabe! Bush, like others in his family, has dedicated his life to a merger of Mexico and the US. I’m sure he’s an honest man, he’s just honestly bad for the continued existence of non-mestizo society. The only candidate worth supporting is Trump. Not because he’s likely to be President, but because he… Read more »
“First off, none of this matters the way we’re used to thinking it matters . . . ” With due apologies for cutting off your remark at that point in your sentence, I’m going to reemphasize a point I believe we both made in our own way on another of Pr. Wilson’s recent posts. Flat out, I believe none of this matters because the damage done by leadership from both parties, and in all three branches, for a long time now is so severe, that the US as we have known it, is done. Indeed, if we’re looking for the… Read more »
Democrats have not lived lives sufficiently pleasing to God that he would reward them by making Trump the actual GOP nominee, though as a Democrat I’m thinking of registering Republican so I can vote for him in the primary. If Trump is the GOP nominee, you might see even places like Idaho, Mississippi and Utah becoming competitive for the Democrats. By the way, there was once a pastor who was active in party politics. One day one of his deacons said to him, “Pastor, you are so partisan, I bet you’d vote for Satan himself if he ran as a… Read more »
Please do. Democrats who think Trump’s popularity helps them aren’t thinking past the next chess move.
that’s gold.
I’ll pay more attention after attrition – but I hope Cruz is still there. Maybe Walker too. Maybe Paul too. Gil-who? In any case, it is true it just won’t make as much difference as I used to think it would. I’m still not quite at the point of I got no dog in the fight.
The fact that Trump isn’t a conservative shouldn’t stop you from voting for him, since none of the other candidates, except for maybe Paul, can be considered conservative in the paleo, Russell Kirk sense.
Paul is more of a libertarian than a conservative, even in the Kirk Sense (which to be fair, was only one stream of the 20th century renewal of 19th century conservatism. American conservatism has never been a monolithic movement, just as it is still not today. Russel Kirk is important, but not exclusively definitive of traditional conservatism)
Paul bills himself as a libertarian-leaning conservative, and I think I agree with that designation. He is less of an interventionist than the other candidates, which is why I was associating him with Kirk, who was also non-interventionist. Though I agree that “conservative” is a pretty fluid term.
I would probably flip it and say he is a libertarian with some conservative leanings, simply based on the libertarian moral philosophy that seems to be his ultimate foundation for everything else, but I won’t quibble. I certainly see your point.
I’m just going by what he said, though based on his views I think he’s right. He’s definitely libertarian on certain issues related to, say, the 4th amendment, but his views on foreign policy, though not as bad as the other candidates, are certainly not in line with the principles of libertarianism.
Please apply that to Cruz and Fiorina. I’m interested to hear your take.
As Fiorina has no chance of winning, I haven’t paid her any attention at all and don’t plan to. Cruz is an interventionist and a neocon seeking Israel money, like the rest.
Beck wrote about Trump: “He is part of the problem when he by his own admission, buys politicians; he said he identifies his “policies more as a democrat”; he makes President Obama look truly humble; he was very pro abortion until very recently; he still says ‘don’t defund planned parenthood’; he is pro ‘assault weapon ban’; he is in favor of a wealth tax that would just ‘take money out of people’s bank accounts’; he is for boots on the ground in Iraq and ‘taking the oil’ from the Iraqi people; he is a progressive ‘republican’; he says single payer… Read more »
I never said I would vote for him. I was just pointing out that the other candidates were not conservative in the classical liberal sense either. I think that would have been a great question to ask, and I think Trump would have had fun with it.
Yes, his reply would have been priceless. Yet there are still opportunities for some brave journalist to ask the question.
That’d be a good question, but an even better one to the other candidates is “who bought you?”
I was hoping you would be at the forefront of bringing back the word “trumpery”.
Aragorn for the win.
I agree with all these. But I will say that Bush’s support of the patriot act made me think twice.
first heard of a Paul and Cruz ticket two years ago.. i’m still thinking it’s a good one..
Will something be said about the Democratic candidates–are they all equally bad for being “the party”? Sanders will be at Liberty in case you need to hear him in person. http://www.onenewsnow.com/politics-govt/2015/08/14/sanders-speaking-at-liberty-u-really “It goes without saying that my views on many issues—women’s rights, gay rights, education and many other issues—are very different from the opinions of some in the Liberty University community.” In fact, the outspoken socialist confirmed his aversion to capitalism and unabashedly touted his plans to distribute the wealth in America. “I think it is important, however, to see if we can reach consensus regarding the grotesque level of… Read more »
I tend to be quite cynical about the political situation as well. Although, I keep hope alive that maybe, just maybe we still have a chance to turn it all around. It’s easy for me to give in to despair about the future of our Republic as the ” every man does what is right in his own eyes” syndrome seems to spread. So called “robust American individualism” blends quite well with “doing whats right in your own eyes” mantra. Placing someone like Cruz in office could be useful if he used the “bully pulpit” to truly encourage the shrinking… Read more »
Douglas Wilson moves along so quickly. discarding the targets that his followers should attack like plastic packaging on Christmas toys. No longer is the target of our moral outrage the “depraved perverts who run the nation”; no longer the “oppressive sodomite policies that prevent the Christian Church from acting as an open political party…” Yet Douglas names, but pointedly avoids calling out, the one Republican candidate that we all politely refer to as a “confirmed bachelor”. ;-) The last time I looked, the new target is “Clinical Researchers” because they are arrogant elitists and they do gross things. Neither are… Read more »
Mark, I frequently run across comments by laymen such as yourself who are not familiar with how “participation” works in 1st Ad law. Here’s Hobby Lobby (2014) quoting/explaining Thomas (1981): Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. Cite as: 573 U. S. ____ (2014); slip opinion at pg 37 Moreover, in Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707 (1981), we considered and rejected an argument that is nearly identical to the one now urged by HHS and the dissent. In Thomas, a Jehovah’s Witness was initially employed making sheet steel for a variety of industrial… Read more »
You said,”The Nobel Prize for medicine in 1954 was given to clinical researchers who used human embryonic tissue to establish colonies of virus for study in the lab. The clinical researchers who perfected the polio vaccine also used fetal tissue from abortions to develop the vaccine in the laboratory.” And this a full two decades prior to legalized abortion. Are you saying these doctors sought out back alley abortionists to perform their fetal tissue studies? or more likely performed the studies on tissue from normal miscarriages. Not all fetal tissue derives from illegal or legal abortions. And the fact that… Read more »
Abortions were legal to protect the life of the mother. Clinical researchers replicate the tissue they obtain from abortions in order to perform their experiments in the laboratory. Yes, payments were made to cover the cost of obtaining tissue. There are numerous examples. “… polio vaccines developed using animal cells were contaminated with a simian virus, which was one of the reasons researchers began using human cell lines in the first place.” “…At the height of a rubella epidemic that began in Europe and spread to the United States in the mid-1960s, [Dr. Henry] Plotkin calculated that 1% of all… Read more »
You and I both share an abhorrence of abortion, fetal tissue research, marketing and trafficking in fetal body parts, because we are vitally interested. Presidential candidates, unless they are actively involved deeply in the pro-life cause, I don’t expect to be politically pure in their thought processes. Not every candidate will agree with me on every single issue regarding abortion and attendant surrounding issues. If I waited for an ideologically pure pro-life candidate to arrive on the scene, I would never be able to vote again. And even if I found one who I considered pure, there would be others… Read more »
Actually, I do not share the horror or abhorrence. I am a ‘non-clinical’ laboratory technician who works regularly with human biological tissues and fluids. The kind of stuff that would make a battle hardened marine (or well disciplined submariner) leave the room throwing up, just from the smell. Saint Ronald Reagan gave me my introduction to the dilemmas of clinical research during the AIDS crisis in his first Presidential term. He did cut off the funding for ‘clinical research’ to find the AIDS virus, which had to be performed in France in the early 1980’s. However, he also allowed the… Read more »
I too am old enough to have know 3 good friends who were victims of polio. Not one of them complained of a lifetime of pain as “twisted cripples”. I also suffered through measles, mumps, chicken pox, and most of the other childhood diseases. So does that make me your equal or at least your contemporary? I doubt if you see it that way. I was actively involved from 1987 through 1995 with the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center acquiring thousands of pints of blood which had to be screened for the HIV virus. I was there when contaminated blood… Read more »
So if victims of disease never complain of the damage that was done to change their lives irreversibly, then it is OK? We should never have saved their lives nor cured the disease? So now you claim that you will find the unsigned consent form, the doctor who is bending the rules in order to get along, and that will prove the perfidy of the entire clinical research system? That Reagan’s allowance for Big Pharma to profit from ‘fees’ is different than the “perverts” at PP? How is this not like “We will find the weapons of mass destruction after… Read more »
Where in my previous post did I indict the “entire clinical research system”? Clinical research is a necessary and extremely important tool in the advancement of medical science. I am not here to explain Dr. Ben Carson’s ability to rationalize his actions. That is for the electorate to decide. There are, I assume, many selfless and hard working clinical researchers tirelessly committed to finding cures for the diseases that plague us all. I wasn’t speaking to the perfidy of the entire clinical research system, only those people within the system who have little to no regard for the law or… Read more »
There is no “reality” before us. This is Douglas Wilson’s fantasy world where only the “oppressive sodomite policies” prevent his Christian Church from using all their resources to behave exactly the same as a political party (except for Lindsey Graham, whom we will continue to politely call a “confirmed bachelor”) ; where the US Government is run by “depraved perverts” (I am reliably informed that the term applies not only to the black man in the white house, but also to all the branches of government – again, except for Lindsey Graham.) ; where the streets of New York City… Read more »
There is no “reality” before us? So the 55,772,015 lives lost since Roe v. Wade was decided is a figment of our collective imaginations? Your hyperbole notwithstanding, the count keeps going up whether you acknowledge reality or not. And your sarcastic bombast re: Douglas Wilson wins you no debate points. Ascribing motives to him which you have drawn out of your own imagination, does not make them true. The old worn out theme: Are you ready to adopt all those unwanted children? has been around as long as the abortion mills. Christian couples and other citizens of good will adopt… Read more »
That’s what I thought. What did you propose to do with those 55,772,015 people. Let the Government take care of them? Keep them in for-profit prisons, let them rot in government institutions,…? I never called anyone “oppressive sodomites” “depraved perverts” “whore of Babylon” <— that was Douglas Wilson. – I haven't even read half of the sputtering name-calling that Douglas Wilson prints here, but I think we can tell who is making up "supposed enemies". "Tired" You don't know the meaning of tired. Everyone that I have met on this weblog knows little to nothing about taking care of children,… Read more »
Those are some very strong accusations against a bunch of people whom you have admitted you don’t know very well. In fact, in this day and age, not caring about the children is one of the most disgusting names you can call a person, just barely short of being a racist. you have no idea what any of these people here have done in their personal lives, nor does it appear that you even care. These are the words of a bigot, plain and simple. Sir, you are a mean, prejudiced and small minded man. You should repent of such… Read more »
In fairness, one of those “excuses”–single male, they wouldn’t let me adopt a child–is mine. Of course, the fact that I didn’t go and have sex and bring a new life into the world and then decided to end it is irrelevant, I’ve apparently committed the moral equivalent of abortion.
Yeah, he’s crazy.
Hey, Mark Allen Sells. Let me explain this again: You cannot expiate the crimes of your ancestors. You can try and try all you like, but you can’t do it. Despise them and those who you think believe like them all you want, whip them with words all you want, you cannot wipe their sins out. You can run this treadmill until your dying day, and not one stain on your family’s banner will be wiped away.
Interesting…When I mention the fact that there are many Christians who adopt unwanted children your response is :” I AM surrounded by friends and family who have reached out to find one more child who needs to be saved from death and gave them a loving home. Good Christian people who have given up thousands of dollars, and gone halfway around the world to find a child who is literally rotting from neglect, and give that child a whole new life.” making my point exactly. You are surrounded…so am I. I have no desire to continue a conversation with someone… Read more »
https://www.facebook.com/AlterNetNews/photos/a.206928327506.133239.17108852506/10153123289477507/?type=1&theater
I like the first comment. “It’s not about the babies or the children. It’s about misogynistic control of women’s sexual behavior.” Misogynistic control of women’s sexual behavior is actually my plan to end abortion and save civilization in the process.
Saving civilization by forcing unchecked population growth of millions of children that you don’t even want?
Please tell me more!!!
Are you enjoying the irony of compliments and levity towards Trump here on this blog in the game of rooks and queens even as Trump is “Planned Parenthood’s Favorite Republican”?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/11/donald-trump-is-planned-parenthood-s-favorite-republican.html
Yep. Your moral outrage is empty if you plan to send 57 million people to government institutions after they’re born.
My cousins went halfway around the world to find a child to care for, after raising 4 of his own. Besides the neglect and malnutrition, at age 3, the girl would have died when the tooth decay, already past her baby teeth in into the underlying bone, finally reached her brain a few months later.
The girl was one of hundreds in that orphanage, thousands in that city,…
Work first to make a world where children are loved and needed.
I’ll just take all 57 million then. Problem solved.
Another ironically apt LOTR reference. In that most of the Republican Candidates act more like Boromir than Aragorn; all choosing to follow and hold Ilsidur’s bane, rather than Anduril, the sword that freed the people of Gondor.
I think someone could say “no way” on Jeb with little to go on, and still be fair.
True that….
Donald Trump has released his immigration policy paper. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform I only see two ways to go with election 2016. One would be to say that the system cannot be reformed and we need to get on with what comes next. In that case you should sit it out or vote a strait Democrat ticket. The other option , the conservative option in the sense of delaying the decline as much as you can for as long as possible, is to vote for Trump. I know a lot of people consider him an unserious candidate but nothing can be more unserious… Read more »
The “unserious” objection is really funny, given how deeply unserious our current administration has been. When there’s a clown show going, might as well bring in a professional clown.
An element being overlooked is eligibility. Cruz, Rubio, Jindal, and Santorum are not Natural Born Citizens. Sorry folks, Cruz was born to a Cuban father, born in Canada, and until recently, had dual citizenship. No go.
Oh, please. And McCain was born in Canal Zone.
Rubio, Jindal and Santorum, seriously? Is this U.S. law or the Mayflower Society by-laws you’re working from?
From the “why Trump leads in the polls” theory collection: Many would probably question why, of all people, a decadent, rude, and pompous billionaire should be trusted to meddle with American culture? I think it comes down to a perception that America has already drowned in a post-modernist nightmare of moral relativism, from which extreme political correctness and protest culture stem. Trump, on the other hand, is all absolutes. Everything he says, accurate or not, is stated in absolute, definitive terms. His personal morality is clear: He respects people who work hard, are loyal, innovate, and “win,” and he shuns… Read more »