Sunday, October 25, 2015

Atop the GOP Polls But Destined to Lose

Silly me. I thought that the most excellent gnarly GOP crash occurred in the election of 2012, but this year's scrum is shaping up to be the Hurricane Patricia of political wipeouts (and by the by, if a Republican was president they would never allow a Mexican hurricane to come to the United States). After all, Mitt lost the last election because he appeared to be too rich, too quick to dismiss those on government programs as takers, and too oblivious to see that asking people to self-deport was one of the all-time losingest phrases a politician has even uttered.

Ahh, but this year's GOP crop is a real bumper. It's not enough to say that you'll throw out all of the undocumented immigrants and their children. Now you get to the top of the polls by "suggesting that a Muslim should never be president and that the Holocaust could have been prevented if the Jewish people in Germany were armed." 

And people say that Americans don't understand history.

Even better, some conservatives wanted to drop Advanced Placement US History courses because there weren't enough conservative voices in the curriculum and that teachers only taught what is bad about America. Cooler heads in Oklahoma prevailed, but still. Ben Carson's view of history fits right in with the skewed, distorted vision the far right has about America. They want to arm the country and glorify weapons, which is  a characteristic of militaristic regimes, but they call Barack Obama a fascist for issuing executive orders on...the environment...health care...immigration...gun control. I think the best way to experience how the right wing sees this country is to stand on one's head until all of the blood rushes to it, and then stand up very quickly.

It all makes sense now.

I'll say this until it becomes a fact: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz will not be elected president in 2016. They will not. Will not. That's not wishful thinking; that's the truth. Even with a dysfunctional Republican Party, the citizens of the United States do not elect people with predominantly negative messages.

We do not support throwing out 11 million people from this country.
We do not want to arm every college student and elementary school teacher.
We do not want to ban abortions.
We do not deny that the climate is changing.
We do not want to give the wealthy even more tax breaks.
We do not support keeping wages so low that workers cannot meet basic necessities.

Yet that is exactly what even the candidates with government experience, such as Rubio, Bush, Kasich and Christie are saying. Each of these candidates will have a difficult time getting elected in 2016, much less one of those that are leading the polls today.

After every presidential election, the media takes itself to task for focusing on the horse race at the expense of the issues. That's exactly what they're doing now, and in the process they are giving outsize influence to the candidates who are saying the most outrageous things. In the end, they will fade. Count on it.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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