Understanding that my opinion has been sought by no one, I
nevertheless have decided to make it public who I intend to vote for in the
March 1, Republican Primary in Alabama. (This proves that Donald Trump isn’t
the only person driven to obnoxiousness by his ego.)
Some candidates I eliminated, and some eliminated themselves
by dropping out. (Carly, I would have voted for you!) None were perfect, and the
men who remain all have flaws of varying severity. Starting with those I find
least acceptable and working my way to the one I will ultimately vote for, here
are my assessments:
Donald Trump – I don’t
know what he actually believes, and I have no idea what he would actually do if
(God forbid) he gets elected. But even worse as far as I’m concerned, he seems
to have based the viability of his campaign on the willingness of people
to condone the most stupid/nasty behavior to show they're angry about being let down by "The Establishment." Ironically, Trump's supporters are falling for the mother of all con jobs.
Dr. Ben Carson –
Like just about everyone else, I’m favorably disposed to like Dr. Carson.
Unfortunately, supporting him violates my rule against voting for anyone who
knows less about important issues than I do.
John Kasich – I really
like Kasich on a human level. He seems to have managed to
spend most of his life in politics and still hold onto his
principles—which are basically to be a good, decent and fair human being. He is
what used to be called a ‘statesman.’ In other words, Kasich is Dudley Do-Right … and
the Clinton machine would leave him tied to a railroad track. Even if elected, Kasich
would be outnumbered about 1,000:1 by Snidely Whiplashes. It’s likely the
Democrats would steal his lunch money every day of his term, and they’d rob all
the working people’s money as well … along with every other individual right that
Constitution-loving Americans hold dear.
Jeb Bush – Jeb prefers
smaller government solutions to liberal ones—I think. He’d probably be
a competent president. But a leader needs to have an idea of where he wants to
take the country, not just making sure the “trains run on time.” Reagan had
that, and say whatever you else you want to about him, so does Barack Obama. I’m
afraid Jeb would only want to “fix” the BO Railroad, when what we need to do is
blow it up and set off in a completely different direction. On an emotional
level, Jeb is also like choosing something other than what you really want. He’s
the healthy-choice meal, or the girl you can get to go with you to the prom
rather than the one that makes your heart go piddity-pat.
Ted Cruz – Here’s
the attractive ‘bad boy.’ Simply based on a checklist of issues, I’m most in tune
with Cruz. He has a nice libertarian streak. He has the greatest raw intelligence
of any candidate running for president (on either side). Cruz also has that ‘vision
thing’ I’m looking for. Those are important enough considerations that I can
overlook the fact he doesn’t have executive experience and that he’s only a
first-term Senator. Given Risk vs. Reward, I might even be willing to bet he
could overcome the tidal wave of opposition from the Democrats’ attack dogs in
the news and popular media. (He’s got the data-mining thing going on!) The
problem? Well, I don’t like the sneaky stuff he pulled with Ben Carson in Iowa—not
so much that he did it, but that he tried to pass it off as an unfortunate
error and coated a dirty trick with a saccharin apology. In general, Cruz seems a
little too Clinton-like for my tastes … character matters (or at least save the
rough stuff for the general election!). Plus, his voice gets on my nerves.
And that leaves …
Marco Rubio – I
remember when Rubio, as a Tea Party Conservative, basically ran Charlie Crist
out of the Republican Party. (BTW, Crist may still be running. This week, I
think he’s with the Bull Moose Party.) Next to Cruz, Rubio is the most reliably
conservative Republican still in the race. And by conservative, I mean for
limited government, pro-Constitution, supportive of the rule-of-law and willing
to fight terrorism. The biggest knock against him was his “Gang of Eight”
gambit in favor of immigration reform. Yeah, it irritated me too, but being a
principled conservative doesn’t always
have to foreclose the possibility of a U.S. Senator trying to make legislation.
At the time, Rubio was new to the Senate and probably naively believed Barack
Obama and the Democrats could be trusted on anything. Since then, he has had
about four years to learn any deal with Obama is a bad deal for America.
As with Cruz, Rubio’s lack of experience on the national
stage or executive experience still bothers me. But I actually understood what
he was trying to say (over and over and over) during his debate meltdown with Chris
Christie. His point was that you don’t need to have a lot of experience to be
effective, by pointing to what Obama has been able to do after just a single undistinguished term in the Senate. Unfortunately, Rubio
got lost also trying to infer that he’d be an effective force for good, whereas
Obama has put his efforts into attacking anything that makes America
great. (Yeah, the argument is still a bit too complicated to follow). I believe
I can usually trust Rubio to make good decisions for our country.
In reality, Rubio’s ethnicity probably won’t help him much with the Hispanic
vote—the illegals will still vote for Hillary or Bernie. However, he’s
definitely the most attractive candidate the Republicans can muster for getting
a better share of the all-important, low/no-info vote. And I think he’d acquit
himself fairly well in the general election after going through preliminary trial-by-fire from his fellow candidates in the GOP nomination process.
Rubio’s electable, I mostly trust him, he’d make
a fairly good president and … most importantly, he’s the best we have to choose
from. 
