Making a mistake is not the end of the world. We all make them. What is the end of the world is when we don’t learn from the ones we make so that we don’t repeat them.
That’s what the GOP is doing. Seemingly not learning a thing from the errors it made leading up to the 2012 Presidential election, it is doing it all over again in this run up to the 2016 Presidential election. Déjà vu all over again.
In the 2012 campaign, the GOP offered up a battery of candidates, most of them unqualified for the job. I would say singularly unqualified except way more than one of them were unqualified.
Instead of attacking their real opponent, Barack Obama, who was singularly unqualified — he can’t even spell Barak correctly 🙂 — the GOP spent the better part of a full year doing his job, attacking one another. And in the process they let him steal an election that was the GOP’s for the taking. (If anyone doubts this observation, consider the 2014 GOP Congressional and gubernatorial landslide elections.)
And here they are, repeating their 2012 foibles all over again, attacking one another at every turn while ineptly failing to capitalize on Hillary Clinton’s email and Benghazi vulnerabilities. Consider, for example, early frontrunner Jeb Bush, whose campaign has all but crashed and burned. Is he spending his last gasp attacking the opposition, Hillary, and attempting to serve his party? Not at all. Rather, he is attempting to take Marco Rubio out with him. Why? Does he think that will help him? Wrong. Does he think that will help his party? Wrong. But no one can seem to drill any common sense into him, or the GOP.
Die hard GOP fans say “It’s early. There’s plenty of time yet. They’ll get it sorted out. They’ll get it right.” Well, in my opinion, “It’s later than they think.”
So, if I were running the GOP, what would I do now? You know how the GOP has relegated the lower polling “candidates” to the warm up debates, i.e., to the minor leagues, to campaign purgatory? I’d delegate all of the candidates except for Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump (in alphabetical order, folks) to campaign purgatory and focus the attention on the four who have any possible chance of being nominated. If the GOP can banish those they already have to the self-fulfilling prophecy of campaign purgatory, why not the rest of those who no longer serve any genuine purpose?
Actually, in my opinion, Carson and Trump also have no chance of being nominated. While they may be entertaining foils for allowing “we the people” to vent against the political establishment, does anyone really believe they will command any serious share of the electorate when it comes time for people to enter the polling booths and actually vote their true conscience for someone to become President of the United States of America?
At least right now, this election looks like it’s going to be Cruz or Rubio (still alphabetical order) against Clinton. The sooner the country, or at least the GOP, recognizes and focuses on this, the better, and the more focused and efficient, all of the campaign rhetoric will become. Of course, this is now just me venting now. And my view and a dime will get you whatever you can buy for ten pennies.
One parting shot, lest anyone think this blog represents my view of who should be the next President — it doesn’t. As usual, all this blog represents is one more example of my view of how poorly the voters are served by those who would be king. And those who would be kingmakers.
If they can’t run a campaign, how could they run the country?
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