Posted on 03/23/2015 5:02:01 AM PDT by LeoMcNeil
Ted Cruz is set to announce is candidacy for President of the United States. Rand Paul is apparently going to announce early next month before going on a campaign tour. Until today technically the only candidate was Jeb Bush, who announced late last year his intentions. At the time everyone thought that Bush was going to force everyone else to declare their candidacy early. It doesnt appear that has happened, Cruz and Paul have appeared in no rush to make a formal announcement. Scott Walker, perhaps the front runner in the race, still hasnt formally announced his candidacy and theres no telling when he might do so.
A formal announcement at this point is nothing more than a trivial formality. Cruz, Paul and Walker have been campaigning and engaging in the sort of activities one engages in when running for President. Theyve been doing this for months, arguably since the midterm elections. There has never been any doubt that Cruz, Paul and Walker were going to run. Theres little doubt that Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum will be running. The legal distinction between an exploratory committee and a campaign committee may matter to the FEC but in the political world it doesnt matter at all. The 2016 primary season has been under way for some time, the only people who disagree are the paper pushers in the Federal government.
There is one consistent thing about the slate of 99% certain to run candidates. All but one of them is a conservative, either appealing to Christian evangelicals, Tea Party conservatives or Tea Party libertarians. Bush being the lone exception, it is without question that he has the support of the establishment moderate wing of the party. In fact, Bush has been openly hostile to conservatives on the campaign trail. The problem for conservatives is that this election is shaping up just like 2008 and 2012. There are too many conservatives running and only one establishment moderate. In a lust for power, half a dozen or more conservatives are willing to sacrifice the country in a vain attempt to obtain power for themselves.
Some of these people shouldnt even run. In fact, they should step back and act as kingmakers. The endorsement of someone like Mike Huckabee would significantly help one of the other conservative candidates. Huckabee doesnt have what it takes to win the nomination. He hasnt been in office in years, hes selling magic pills for diabetes on the internet wherein he looks like a rabid snake oil salesman. Nevertheless, he has a loyal base that likely would vote for whoever he endorses. Theres power in king making, a lot more than losing a race for President at Huckabees age. We could say the same thing about Rick Santorum. He hasnt been in office in nearly a decade, he got annihilated the last time he ran for US Senate. He was the conservative of last resort against Romney in 2012, he really wasnt a good candidate. Yet hes likely to cater to his own vanity and run in 2016, further diluting the conservative vote. Bush must be thrilled.
At least Cruz and Paul have more base support than Huckabee and Santorum. Having said that, do Republicans really believe the country is going to elect a first term Senator again? Obama didnt exactly work out very well and while Cruz and Paul are obviously better than Obama, most of the country have no idea who these two Senators are or where they come from. In the last century our country has only elected a sitting Senator twice and only one of those times did a sitting Senator defeat a candidate with executive experience. Kennedys victory over Vice President Nixon in 1960 was the lone exception, otherwise this country has elected Governors or Vice Presidents. In other words, the country has a tendency to elect men with executive experience. While Cruz is magnificent on any number of issues, hes going to have a very difficult time convincing people that a first term Senator should be the Commander in Chief. Especially after eight years of Obama. Paul has the same problem. If only we could get rid of some of these candidates, Jeb Bush could be defeated. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen.
I see this “too many conservatives-not enough RINO’s” argument a lot. I always shut up this ridiculous argument with one question:
How did that work out for us in 2012 and 2008?
It will be this summer after he wraps up the biennial Wisconsin state budget. I believe this will be the time table for all governors who plan to run.
If we could get rid of some of these negatives bastards that want to surrender before anything starts, maybe jeb bush could be defeated. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen, why don't you go first, leo?
Yep, pretty much, unless its Sarah Palin. No more lesser evils for me. The GOP-E can go straight to hell.
Amnesty is not nitpicking. A country that has no borders is not a country. I cannot vote for a candidate who is willing to turn over our sovereignty to an invading horde. There are a few issues that are deal-breakers for me. Amnesty is one of them.
Surrender on what exactly? The differences between Walker and Cruz are limited. Frankly, Walker has a stronger track record of beating the left legislatively. Of course Walker isn’t perfect on one or two issues so it would be “surrender” to support him. As though Cruz is 100% perfect at all times. The end result of not “surrendering” is that we end up with total annihilation in the form of Jeb Bush.
The issue is one of mechanics.
There simply isn’t enough money, and (more importantly) not enough capable/experienced campaign staff to support that many candidates.
There will be a winnowing process, like there always is. The problem isn’t have a bunch of extra candidates at the start; it’s having two Conservative candidates in the middle, allowing the moderate to take the nomination with a plurality.j
You wouldn’t have voted for Ronald Reagan then. Without Reagan the road to Obama socialism would have been completed 25 years ago. God only knows where we would be now.
I have not voted FOR a presidential candidate since.
I hope to have the opportunity to vote FOR Ted Cruz.
TED CRUZ FOR PRESIDENT!!!
The only thing they have in common, and of course the only thing that will matter. Such reasoning makes my head throb. Can't you just hear the LIV's tut-tutting about this? "A first-term senator, again?? Oh, that just won't do!"
It will be down to Ted, Scott and Jeb soon enough, with Jeb bringing up the rear.
In theory that sounds right. In practice, by the time Iowa and New Hampshire voted in 2012 only one conservative had withdrawn from the race. That was Herman Cain, who was forced out by a bogus scandal created by Obama’s henchmen.
Romney was able to win “momentum” by tying Santorum in Iowa and winning big in New Hampshire. The next several states rolled through a couple different conservatives as conservative voters latched on to any conservative they thought might be able to defeat Romney. The end result is that none of them had enough money, none of them had enough delegates and none of them had a chance. We’re setting ourselves up for that again, with Bush replacing Romney.
The one thing that will be different is that Ron Paul won’t be eating up a substantial portion of votes. I don’t think Rand will be able to keep his father’s libertarian wing together. The question is what do these voters do. I think a lot of them stay home, which changes the dynamic of the primaries. I see the rest sticking with Rand or maybe moving towards Cruz.
That is our history, for sure. That is our challenge, too. The "Two Big Tents" theory is simply not working very well. What we have at the end of the day is a center-LEFT government that for all practical purposes is no different than the socialist coalition parliaments of the EU.
This is, IMNVHO, much exacerbated by the popular election of the Senate. Perhaps we can squeeze a bit more life out of the moribund two-party deal by repealing that 17th Amendment.
I'll back Cruz. But what I am not hearing are the plans for structural reforms that will reset the course toward constitutional government and redress the state/federal imbalance.
Perhaps if the RINOs had a strong Conservative Party to keep them honest, that would help. On the other side of the aisle, the Centrist Democrats would have to accept and respond to their Socialist and Marxist roots.
This is the move FDR made when running for Governor of New York State, that is bringing the Socialists and Communist Parties into the Democrats' Big Tent to defeat the Republicans. On a national level, this political move has managed to keep them on the short end of the tally ever since, with very brief interludes of sanity. IOW, The Center/LEFT coalition has been increasingly running the country toward Socialism since the 1930's..
If the race were between Cruz, Walker and Bush I would not have a problem with both Walker and Cruz battling it out. My issue isn’t really with those two as much as it’s with Paul, Huckabee, Santorum, Rubio and whatever other conservatives throw their hat in the ring. As it stands now, we’re looking at 6-10 conservatives running. Our vote will get split apart, as will all the money. Meanwhile Bush has all the moderate money and most of their votes.
I really would prefer only one conservative run against Bush but I fully recognize that isn’t possible. We can, however, have fewer than 10 run and still end up with a solid conservative or two battle it out with Bush.
Not only were most of them unelectable, but they were pseudo-conservatives (i.e. conservative rhetoric on some hot-button issue, establishment on all others). Cases in point: Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. They sound "far right" on social issues, but on economic issues they were probably more liberal than Romney. Another example (and an even bigger clown than Rick or Huck) was perennial candidate Alan Keyes, who supported affirmative action and slavery reparations.
The 17th amendment is a huge problem because it entrenches the two party system. By having Senators accountable to the people, just like Congressmen, rather than the states their interests are no different and the Congress might as well be only one house.
We’ve seen in the last 20-30 years a shift away from two big tent parties. The Democrats have, once and for all, rid themselves of blue dog conservatives. The ideological battle in the Democrat Party isn’t between conservative and liberal but between fascists, socialists and communists. The battle is entirely on the left for them. The GOP now resembles what the Democrats used to look like. Our battle is between moderate, left of center types and conservatives. Like the old Democrats, the moderate to liberals control though they have to throw bones to conservatives once in awhile. The conservative error was not uniting Republican and Democrat conservatives in one party 75 years ago.
The writing is on the wall for us conservatives already. In just 20 years the Christian evangelical movement is completely dead. The government schools are churning out a generation of ignoramuses who don’t know how to think unless they’re told what is acceptable. The schools have been bad for a century, they have gotten exponentially worse in the last generation. With the Republicans slowly pushing conservative away and with our ranks dying off, in 25 years we may not exist as a political force anymore. That’s why this election is so important. A Walker or Cruz victory could put off that death another couple decades.
That is why I said “too many non-establishment candidates”, and not “too many conservative candidates”. I couldn’t bring myself to call idiots like Santorum and Huckabee “conservative”. But “non-establishment” is, as you point out, also incorrect. Maybe these candidates defy any label other than “unelectable”?
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