The Colorado Pols Guide to the Republican Race for President
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by: Colorado Pols
Jeb!
Congratulations! You made it.
The Republican field of Presidential candidates wrapped up the fifth debate of the 2016 campaign on Tuesday, and mercifully, the last of 2015. If you missed any of the action, check out this entertaining montage of all 5 debates from Gawker media.
Instead of writing the thousandth “Winners and Losers” blog post from Tuesday’s debate in Las Vegas, we decided to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of the Republican Presidential contenders. We’ve watched all 5 GOP debates – and four of the “kids’ table” undercard battles – and here’s what we think we’ve learned with the Iowa caucuses fast approaching on Feb. 1…
Nobody Knows Shit About Foreign Policy
Tuesday’s debate on CNN was focused almost entirely on foreign policy issues. If the 2016 campaign ends up being a foreign policy election, Republicans are in big trouble. It was painfully obvious that the top tier of Republican candidates were just memorizing facts and tidbits about foreign policy rather than really thinking through the issues. With South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham still relegated to the Junior Varsity debate team, there was nobody on the main stage who seemed even remotely comfortable with the subject matter.
Ben Carson thinks Hamas is a tasty spread made from chickpeas. Chris Christie is confident that he can work well with a Jordanian King who has been dead for 15 years. John Kasich is convinced that he is running for President of Ohio. Carly Fiorina still says she would refuse to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin, because nothing says “diplomacy” quite like the “silent treatment.” Fiorina also says that the U.S. should “isolate” North Korea; if North Korea were any more isolated, the country would be a moon colony.
Sincerity is Dead
According to one recent analysis, Donald Trump tells the truth about issues roughly 7% of the time (or about 100% more often than Fiorina). It is always hard to judge sincerity with a politician, but we can’t remember another group of candidates who are so willing to say anything that might help them with the GOP base – even if it’s complete fiction. Fiorina has repeatedly condemned Planned Parenthood for selling “baby parts,” which she confirmed by watching videos that don’t exist, and for a brief period this blatant lie carried her into the double-digits in national polling. Republican candidates have realized that the best way to reach their base of far-right conservatives is to feed into their fears and nonsense conspiracy theories; if that means sacrificing facts and reality, well, they’ll make that trade-off every time.
For example, we constantly hear questions for Trump about whether he will declare, once and for all, that he will not change his voter registration and run as an Independent in 2016. Trump will make the pledge, and then a few weeks later he’s threatening an Independent bid all over again. Trump understands that he has more leverage as long as he is a threat to run as an Independent candidate, and he has no intention of giving up that Ace in the hole; he’ll promise whatever you want in a debate setting, but it means nothing.
Ben Carson explains which way is up.
Ben Carson is a Very Strange Man
History will long mock Republicans for once thinking that Carson should be among the top contenders for the White House. Some Republicans have bought into the idea of the retired neurosurgeon as a brilliant, yet soft-spoken leader whom one Colorado Republican has called “Christ-like” – Carson is particularly popular in Colorado, for some reason — but would you really let this guy cut open your melon and start poking around in your brain? We’re not sure we’d even trust Carson to remove a splinter.
Carson has seemed lost at multiple points in every debate thus far, relying on a quiet demeanor to mask the fact that he is in way over his head on virtually every policy discussion. He is particularly clueless when it comes to foreign policy, but his foibles are certainly not limited to that arena; we’re talking about a guy who has wondered aloud about “where gravity came from.”
Jeb! Bush is Sad to Watch
If the 2016 election were a comedic performance (intentionally, anyway), Jeb! Would be the “straight man” stock character whom everyone else pokes fun of in order to generate a laugh. Jeb! has this perpetual look on his face that someone just kicked his dog, and on the rare occasion that Bush comes up with a decent one-liner, he is almost always immediately upstaged by another candidate.
Jeb! has been out of the political limelight for years after finishing his term as Florida governor in 2007, but with the way he performs on stage and on the campaign trail, you’d be excused for thinking he had been cryogenically frozen since the 1990s. It’s hard not to feel sorry for Jeb! at times; he’s like a baseball player who can’t catch, throw, or hit, but he keeps getting re-signed because some old scout is convinced that he has “potential.” He doesn’t. Jeb! is not good at this, and he seems absolutely miserable.
Ted Cruz is Fantastically Unlikable
You’ve probably read one of the many stories about how disliked Cruz has become in the U.S. Senate (and everywhere else in Washington D.C.) Even former GOP Presidential candidate Bob Dole goes out of his way to knock the Texas Senator. Cruz has said on stage that he is probably not the candidate that you would most want to meet for a beer, which might be the biggest understatement of the campaign. Cruz is loud and obnoxious in debates, regularly talking over the moderators and interrupting speakers; you can practically feel the animosity toward Cruz when he is on stage. Cruz is correct when he says that you don’t need to be the most likable candidate to win an election, but it’s hard to maintain a loyal base of support when you are such a genuine asshole.
The Rest of the GOP Field
We’ll go through this list quickly, with just a few thoughts on each candidate:
Rand Paul
Why is Paul still running for President? Is there any scenario in which the Kentucky Senator becomes the kind of serious contender for the White House, as many pundits predicted 12 months ago? At least he has good hair.
John Kasich The former governor of Ohio seems to genuinely believe that being a former governor of Ohio is enough to propel him to the White House. Kasich is certainly the most moderate and reasonable of the top Republican candidates, but in 2016 he’s just the guy who showed up to a costume party in a business suit. This is the wrong election to be a rational Republican trying to win the support of the Tea Party types.
Chris Christie
Voters are clearly not impressed with Christie’s record as Governor of New Jersey, so on Tuesday, Christie referred to his former career as a federal prosecutor at just about every opportunity. The straight-talking, New Jersey tough guy shtick didn’t have the shelf life that Christie supporters had hoped.
Carly Fiorina
The only reason she is not more despised is because of the presence of Ted Cruz. She had a brief flash of relevance earlier in the fall, and it’s been downhill ever since. Fiorina is just auditioning for a Fox News contract at this point.
Marco Rubio
Republicans have been waiting for Rubio to fully blossom and emerge as a number one contender, as the Florida Senator has generally kept his head down in hopes of waiting out the Trump phenomenon. But what if we’ve already seen the best of Rubio? He was finally forced to answer a question about his immigration policy on Tuesday, and he sounded like a guy trying to talk his way out of a speeding ticket; Rubio just barfed out a bunch of words until the moderators moved on to another topic.
Rubio is a young, relatively inexperienced politician who is starting to sound more and more like he’s just a young, relatively inexperienced politician – nothing like the precocious prodigy that his PR team has managed to create.
Donald Trump
We’re as surprised as everyone else that Trump is still leading the Republican field by a wide margin. In retrospect, however, Trump’s success is understandable: Trump is interesting, and the rest of the GOP field is, in a word, not. Republicans are paralyzed trying to counter Trump’s charisma, leaving many pundits and elected officials to their hopes that Trump “will never be the GOP nominee.” Maybe – but if you had to place a bet today, would you really put your money on anybody else?
December 16, 2015 03:17 PM UTC
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A little bit of NYT fact checking . . .
. . . as in, checking to see if any facts even exist:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/fact-check.html