All the noise being made in Iowa about the Caucasus, the Straw poll and pig fries reminds me of someone rattling three marbles in an empty bucket. Iowa, along with its fellow noisemakers New Hampshire and South Carolina, ultimately mean nothing in real presidential politics. They are three insignificant states that have managed to get their names in the papers by being the first to have primary action but they are so small in population, electoral votes and other significance that they have almost zero say in the presidential elections.
Iowa is an insignificantly populated state that is 92% white, 3% black and 5% Latino, Think about where that puts it as a representative American state. It’s home base, if you’re a Christian Conservative, but it’s a foreign country if you’re anyone else. So why don’t the Republicans grab hold of reality and stop making so much out of what happens in a state that outside corn, pigs and bigotry, doesn’t really have very much to offer.
Watched Martin O’Malley talk this morning, about what he would want to get done as a president. He makes a lot of sense and he knows how to answer a question without trying to wriggle out from under it.
Then I watched Ben Carson, the GOP candidate who I haven’t always thought was up to the job; but that was, possibly, because of a slow and extremely deliberate style of responding to questions. Carson is well able to articulate his position on most matters. He certainly isn’t the worst candidate that the Republicans could promote. His biggest problem might be that if he won he would put the nation to sleep during his acceptance speech.
Then Bobby Jindal weighed in with his take on our foreign policy. Jindal might have something intelligent to say if he understood what has already happened overseas, which he doesn’t. Jindal seems to think the war in the Middle East started when Obama took office. He fails to understand that it was the Bush/Cheney imbeciles who actually got us into a war in that area. Because of his basic ignorance on the subject, he doesn’t see that Obama’s moves have all been to counter the mistakes that were made by Bush. Jindal is one of those guys who are always trying to talk you into submission. Maybe if he wasn’t so busy running his mouth, he might have learned that it wasn’t Obama who started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that it is Obama that is trying to get us out of a place that no longer has any significance for us.
Carly Fiorina has jumped into the fray. Carly’s a very smart person but she seems to have chosen as her political plan, the assassination of Hilary Clinton. She’s the woman that will get the woman, but she seems to have forgotten that in order to fulfill that dream she has to win the primary and to do that one must have a plan about our economy, and foreign policy. Carly may very well have these plans but so far she has kept them very much to herself, as she barges forward in her attacks on Clinton. Hers is the ultimate negative campaign.
As to her own claims to fame, Carly isn’t shy about telling us of her ultimate claim which is serving as the president of Hewlett Packard. Her attitude seems to say, I created HP; but the fact is that she rose through the company, not as an innovator but like most corporate CEOs, as a nose to the grindstone corporate climber. Sure she attained the top spot, but then she got kicked out because of failure to lead. That failure is her chief qualification for president. Pity.
Rick Santorum was all over the place this weekend trying to make the point that the Democrats were anti-labor. This is an interesting POV from a guy who has made very little sense in the past and continues on the same track now. His contention is that the Democrats are pro immigration because they see that as a plan to get new votes, and that makes them anti-labor because the new immigrants will work for lower salaries. That is such GOP logic that it is laughable. The idea, Rick, isn’t to get new cheap labor, it’s to get more money for all labor, regardless of whether they are immigrant or native born; that’s why the Democrats are trying to raise the minimum wage. The Republicans on the other hand are fighting any rise because they are backed by corporate money. Santorum has spent so much of his time worrying about abortion and denying women their rights that he hasn’t had time to make sense of anything else that’s really important.
Maybe America’s move to deny religion as a factor in politics will help sweep guys like Santorum into the ditch, where they belong.
Next came Jeb Bush talking about ISIS and that we have to coordinate with the Iraqi government to fight ISIS. In this Bush shows his ignorance of a situation wherein his brother George started the war with no good purpose and then put a government into office that all but destroyed the peace. He also shows that he has absolutely no knowledge of the current situation. There is no functional government in Iraq now. There is no functional army either. If we want to beat ISIS that will only happen with the help of the Kurds and Iran. That’s the simple truth. The Sunnis in the Iraq army have shown that they will not fight the Sunni group ISIS.
Of course this is a guy who hasn’t been able to decide whether or not he’s going to run while doing everything in the world to declare that he is running. If it barks like a dog, Jed, it’s probably a dog and you are one very barking dog.
All the news reporters are bitching about Hillary not answering any questions. This is just a case of Hillary knowing that we have so far to go, that answering questions has no point until she has a GOP candidate to run against. O’Malley and Sanders aren’t going to beat her so what’s the point of talking until you have an opponent to talk about. Sure the reporters are mad because they now have to actually work for their stories but Hillary is doing exactly the correct thing by not making statements about stuff that has, at this point, no real relevance.
What the news people would love is for her to make statements against the twenty odd candidates that the Republican’s have in their cockfight? No. She is doing exactly what she should be doing, standing back, watching the mess that the GOP has given birth to, and waiting until she has someone to attack. Why should she be bothered attacking all the losers that the GOP has put forth?
But just to give the press a little something to assuage their hunger she came out this week with a proposal to expand voting times and to eliminate obstacles to voting, especially in minority districts. In doing so she picked out what her advisors consider the four top potential opponents, Bush, Walker, Perry and Christie. Of course they all reacted, how could they not, which was exactly what Hillary wanted. Throw a little meat in front of the dogs and they will try their best to tear it apart.
Watched Chris Christie and Bill de Blasio being interviewed, and while I have often agreed with both on various issues, probably de Blasio more than Christie, it’s easy to see that Christie is the more charismatic speaker. In both cases today they spoke with intelligence and logic about the problems we face as a country. I think if Christie actually became a candidate he would be my first choice in the GOP.
And speaking about GOP choices, it really appears that Scott Walker is the front-runner right now. Bush is looking more and more like a weak loser. He can’t decide whether or not to announce, mainly because he is afraid of losing. He thinks that if he announces that he’s running and then doesn’t win he will be tagged with the title, he already owns – loser. But you can’t win if you haven’t got the balls to try and that’s just where Bush is now. Walker looks confident and like he has the stones to run the country. It’s unfortunate that so many of his policy ideas will be bad for the country. He’s a good candidate but he would be a terrible president.