But that doesn't mean you give up. Democracy is best served by ensuring that we, the voters, have the best possible candidates to choose from. It's a foregone conclusion that, for good or ill, Pres. Obama will be the Democratic party's candidate in 2012. It's similarly as certain as one can reasonably be that either a Democrat or a Republican will win that election. This means that the most significant impact most of us can have on this election may be to help select the Republican nominee. I encourage everyone who can, either as party members or in open primaries, to become informed and vote in the Republican primary. I similarly encourage those who do not care to become informed to not vote, which would only serve to reduce the influence of those of us who care.
To that end, I will be posting my comments on the GOP contenders as the primary progresses. It is my hope to provide useful information to any who are planning to vote.
Let's take a look at the candidate field, and make some preliminary observations. As of this writing, there are fifteen declared candidates. I'll knock out the easy ones first. Keep in mind that I'm not looking at any polling data so far, beyond preliminary indications that Paul and Bachmann are doing well. This is all based on positions and public statements.
- We can reasonably conclude that Jonathon Sharkey is not a serious candidate.
- Rick Perry has a few points against him. He seems to think it's perfectly okay to throw about public accusations of capital crimes that he can't back up in court. By that standard, I suppose it would be okay for me to say Rick Perry is a murderer. If he can't tell the difference between a political opinion and a statement of hard legal fact, he has no business being in any sort of office. It's also impressive how he both claims credit for Texas' balanced budget, while decrying the Federal handouts that covered Texas' budget shortfall. Total hypocrisy. And his Politifact record is not encouraging.
- Michelle Bachmann has a Politifact record as bad as any I've seen. She frequently makes public political statements that are totally divorced from reality. She's either horribly uninformed, or purposefully deceptive, neither of which is an acceptable quality in a leader. In congress, she complained that the 2010 census has become to intrusive, even though it's nearly identical to previous censuses. She believes that CO2 is in no way harmful. (It is.) And then there's the simple fact that she's been part of the Republican House effort to hold the entire country hostage via the debt ceiling to achieve their unpopular political ends. Oh, and she voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT act, as well.
- McCotter, also in the House, also held the country hostage, also voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT act. Any of those makes him unacceptable in my book. On the plus side, he did vote to end the Bush tax cuts, one of the leading drivers of the present deficit, after having earlier voted to extend them. Of course, so did Bachmann, so that's not exactly saying much. His voting record and positions don't seem totally insane. Perhaps the best we can say for him is that he hasn't opened his mouth on camera enough to even have a Politifact record.
- Newt Gingrich has surprisingly sane positions on a number of things, but again, his politifact is just ridiculous. My biggest single problem is his total flop on Libya. There's just no way on earth to buy his explanation of that. I see no better answer but that he was disagreeing with Pres. Obama just to do it. Newt's also got a couple other flips and pants-on-fire moments that raise eyebrows.
Cain, Huntsman, Johnson, Karger, Martin, McMillan, Paul, Roemer, Romney, and Santorum will wait for another post.
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