Who Do I Like in 2016?

People ask me who do I, as a Registered Republican and power broker, like in our party’s 2016 presidential campaign?

So far, there are only 17 candidates. I want to see who else is running before I commit.

But I’m thinking.

1.

Some folks like Scott Walker, the latest to join the cast of The Magnificent 17.

He’s the cheesehead from Wisconsin who is too dumb to be president. Walker’s the man who said he didn’t know if Pres. Obama is a Christian or if he loves America. He was also the man who wished everybody around Chanukah time “A happy Molotov.”

The Poster Boy for Bland and Boring, he’s the one who withstood a recall election and is loved for busting the unions. He strikes me as a man who could be as popular with the working people as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick after the Homestead Strike of 1892.

And he is busy embellishing his credentials as a friend of education by cutting the budget of his state university, one of the finest, and undermining the tenure system, littered with some of the nation’s most respected professors. Go Badgers!

A drop out from Marquette U., the governor seems to be a candidate for a brain transplant. Nevertheless, he reportedly has been studying up on foreign affairs. He should enroll in night school at U of Wisconsin, if they still have one after he gets finished with the hatchet. Fellow candidate Donald Trump might offer him a limited degree at Trump U., which he claims is worth some $330,000. Attorney General Schneiderman of N.Y. says that is somewhat exaggerated. It’s worth: bupkis. A place known, if you’ll pardon the academic language, as Fuck U., the unlicensed diploma mill is one of candidate Trump’s contributions to higher education.

2.

There is a debate going on in our party ranks today about who is a bigger idiot –Trump or Rafael (Ted) Cruz. The senator from Texas — currently the only Canadian-born candidate in the race who questioned the President’s eligibility based on birthplace — is also the man who has promised, if elected, he would close down the INS and put its people to work guarding the border.

A self-proclaimed independent thinker, Cruz was one of the first to come to the defense of independent thinking Trump. No need to apologize on how to increase the Hispanic vote. If and when he bails, Cruz told us he would get the votes of Trump supporters. And he may be right, since they both represent the idiot wing of the Republican Party.

I’m not really worried about Trump. He only looks so good now because he is up against summer reruns. He also seems to be getting campaign advice from the same firm that picks panelists for “The Jerry Springer Show.”

I realize I have been known to malign Senor Trump in these letters, but El Donald does have his good points. He may sound crazy, but you have to be very smart to be very rich, to go through multiple bankruptcies, wear nice suits, and be so well informed about everything.

3.

Even the front-runner in the polls so far is not very appealing. Jeb Bush is the man who claims we could double our rate of economic growth if we weren’t so lazy. So what if some of us are already working two and three jobs and still not living the life Jeb is accustomed to. At least he didn’t say what that idiot Rand Paul theorized: half of those not working hard enough are “anxious and have bad backs.”

I don’t know if I’m ready for another Bush, after the last two. And I worry about encouraging Neil regarding his presidential aspirations. You remember third brother Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, one of the stars of the Silverado Savings & Loan fiasco of 1980 that cost US taxpayers $1.3 billion to fix, at the urging of father George H. W. Neil’s business career is almost as bad as Jeb’s corporate rap sheet.

In the Bush family adherence to no child left behind policy, there may be a run by Marvin Bush in the family crystal ball.

4.

I guess I must be hard to please.

But is this short list — and I will get to others as the comedy show continues — IT? Is this really the bottom of the barrel? Is this the best and brightest the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt can muster in the 161 years it’s been in practice?

Why even Barry Goldwater belongs on Mt. Rushmore compared to the names that have surfaced so far.

The much-maligned Herbert Hoover was at least a great humanitarian, when it came to being a children’s advocate. Calvin Coolidge, who first said, “The business of America is business,” was better for business. Forget Silent Cal. He ruined his reputation breaking the Boston police strike in 1917.

Those were Republicans worthy of admiration and their place in history.

Surely, there has to be more than The Magnificent 17.
Isn’t there a dark horse candidate still in the barn?

Until then, count me as voting “None of the above.”

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Marvin Kitman
July 17, 2015