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Friday, August 19, 2011

The Republican Primary So Far, and Why We Might Be Screwed

The Atlanta Wire, not known for its conservative leanings, had A Brief History of the Republican Primary So Far posted recently that is actually a very reasonable breakdown of the revolving door of media infatuation with the GOP's most recent presidential hopefuls. They chart the beginning, middle, and if applicable, end of each candidate's moment in the limelight, complete with Google analytics to back it up. Pretty nifty and worth checking out.

And here's why the Republican party is kinda screwed, at the moment: all of the candidates that the media has been in love with for more than a week or so are crazy. Trump, Palin, Bauchman, Perry -- they're all a little off their rockers on one thing or another.

And the actual crazy one, Ron Paul, is being ignored like he's not even there! I mean, the guy nearly won the Iowa straw poll, less than 200 votes behind then-sterling Michelle Bauchman. But Paul is boring and consistent with his message of isolationist and anti-war stance,which I think the press (and most of the Republican electorate) got bored with about five years ago. While Paul has some very valid points and concerns, he is about as unelectable in a national race as Mel Brooks would have been in the 1960s.

It seems like the only semi-viable candidates at the moment are the Mormon ones. Jon Huntsman is my current favorite, but he needs to learn how to run a campaign; and Mitt Romney is still attractive in that executive-experience and really-good-hair kind of way, but neither are garnering much positive attention right now.

Oh well, the GOP race got started way to early and there's still a year left before anything meaningful happens anyway, so I suppose I shouldn't get to worked up about it just yet.

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