The initial crop of candidates is enough to make you despair (me despair anyway).
Republicans - Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush
Democrats - Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I am a naturalized citizen and take my voting privilege seriously but argh. I can’t see myself voting for any of the above.
Of course it’s early yet.
Teddy Roosevelt.
Hillary Clinton is such a poor, awful, no-good candidate and since she’ll get the nomination, I don’t see how she can win. She has no base except for aging feminists.
Jeb looks a lot better. Has strong support among Republican elites, and can proudly show off his hispanic wife for votes among her brethren. Should be pretty strong.There is no other serious Republican candidate.
^I’m not a big Cruz fan, but I think you guys are seriously underestimating him. He can get the Hispanic vote, simply because of his last name. Went to an elite private high school, Princeton, then Harvard law. He beat the pants off of a good-ol-boy who had been Lt. Governor for many years for his Senate seat. He’s a shrewd politician, and can really open it up in a debate.
And he’s as far to the right as Obama is to the left, so he’s probably going to pull the other Republican candidates to the right, too.
isnt it 2016 or we talking about inaguration? i guess niether has anything to do with the discussion
Problem is, Cruz will need those good-ol-boy$, and I don’t think he will get hispanic votes being so far right, plus he’s Cuban, so not really hispanic.
^He has a hispanic last name. Therefore he must be Mexican.
A lot of the well-informed voters I spoke to said so when they voted for/against him in the Senate election. Some people refused to vote for him because he was Mexican, and some voted for him just because he was Mexican, and therefore knew what it was like to be one of them.
If I was Ted Cruz, I’d put a theme to my campaign modeled after 1997’s enormously underrated movie, Speed 2: Cruise Control. I’d call my campaign, Ted Cruz: Cruz Control and I would be seen with a pair of Ray-Bans on all of my campaign posters photographed across a background that simulates motion in a still snapshot (like the motion lines seen in the background of those anime cartoons when characters jump into action to strike their enemy and gnash their teeth and seem to levitate forever, and you’re thinking hey, this character is in the air for way too long and I no longer believe in the plausibility of this jump). Anyway, I would cross my arms like lawyers do in Yellow Pages ads to indicate that they are serious. I’d also listen to my campaign managers and take their advice to not contort my face so that it looks like I’ve just inhaled elevator flatulence, at once concealing the odd and simultaneous occurrence of both disgust and stifled laughter.
And then, once I’ve set all of this up, I’d go ahead and you know, massively f**king lose the election.
Mitt Romney or another BSD.
Do what you want USA but please…please…just not another inbred who will invade countries for oil.
Dude was too good for the average 'Merican voter. They’d rather some evangelical Bible end times Zionist on the right, or some minority or woman community organizer/bum/life long public leach on the left.
Are the Republicans going to let Jindal run or not?
I heard that Louisiana found a loop hole to not pay the guy who was wrongly put on death sentence? He’s become just as crazy as the rest.
No. He shot himself in the foot a few years back when he gave the republican response to the State of the Union. He was probably the worst orator I’ve ever seen.
S2000 wins this thread.
Cruz appears scary to me. A right wing nut job comes to mind. I mean is he really going to run on abolishing Obamacare and the IRS. Please. I don’t think his name has anything to do with getting the hispanic vote. One look at him and hearing him talk, latinos will run.
Although I don’t think he would win in the general election because he’s too far to the right, I have to agree that Cruz is dismissed too easily by most people. People constantly refer to him as an idiot, which coudn’t be further from the truth. I disagree with a lot of his positions, but the dude is smart and smooth. As Greenie noted above, Cruz has serious academic credentials. He was also an extremely successful attorney and has argued more cases in front of the SCOTUS than anyone alive. I think he’s actually positioning himself for a cabinet position or AG if a republican wins the WH. His election funds, endorsement, and whatever electoral votes he’s able to accumulate will buy him some serious favors from whoever gets the nomination.
One of my good friends dated Cruz’s chief of staff. I can confirm Cruz is entirely insane.
I like to believe many politicians that align themselves with the Tea Party are doing so for votes and dollars, but at the end of the day they know those people are crazy. That may be the case - hopefully for Rand Paul that’s the case anyway - but Cruz totally drinks the kool-aid.
Edit: Cruz as AG is one scary thought. I’d rather he be president honestly.
Cruz is a smart guy I don’t think there is any doubt about that. However, credentials don’t mean much anymore in the Presidential election (once you meet a certain threshold). Mitt had far better credentials on paper and in real life than Obama (Mitt is a stud on paper) and got beaten pretty handily. You have to relate to the people and be well liked and be moderate and Cruz is not any of those things.
the fat guy from Jersey
^^ Agreed, which is why I believe he has no shot in a general election. I have think he believes that as well, although maybe he really is so insane that he thinks he could actually win a general election.
He could even be looking for a SCOTUS nomination. President Obama re-opened the door for nominees who have never been judges when he nominated Kagan. A moderate republican who wants to rally the conservative base in a re-election run could score serious points by putting Cruz on the SCOTUS for the next 35-40 years.