THE GOP CLOWN CAR NEEDS TO BE A DOUBLE-DECKER BUS

…Presidential hopeful, Mike “Huckster” Huckabee.

The question is, “Who isn’t running to be the Republican nominee?

This is one of my most favorite times when a big election is in the wings and when the GOP Clown Car is going full-steam.  Today, there are about 20 different possible Republican candidates going for the Republican nomination, and they all are going ass-over-tea-kettle to out-do each other, and boy are they succeeding.

Of that 20 potential gofers, only about six of them have so far made their running “official”.  But another 4 or 5 are expected to do so before the end of this month.

But let’s look at some of the gaffes made by those that have already announced.

First, we will look at the latest announced candidate, Dr. Ben Carson.  This retired neurosurgeon recently made his outrageous announcement ceremony that would have impressed the movie mogul, Cecil B. De Mille.

Now, the good Dr. had already put his foot in his mouth in his statements that being gay is a personal choice and that “Obamacare was the worst thing since slavery”, but he really stepped in it again when talking about his not taking questions from the press. 

In one recent interview, Glenn Beck had called him out for responding to a question with a particularly dumb answer.  Dr. Carson apologized, but also took the opportunity to blame the media for asking all those “gotcha” questions.  Dr. Carson then stated, "I simply have decided I'm not really going to talk about that issue anymore because every time I'm gaining momentum the liberal press says, 'Let's talk about gay rights,’” he said. “And I'm just not going to fall for that anymore.”  But he did, just a few weeks later, when CNN’s Chris Cuomo, reminded him that presidents and candidates couldn’t just decide to not talk about the issues.

However, shortly after that escapade, a New York Times Magazine profile made a major point of demonstrating how a figure like Dr. Carson had his continuing problem of making dumb comments.  As if to demonstrate the problem, a profile in a GQ article showed Carson was unaware of, and basically uninterested in the government in Israel.

Dr. Carson it seems is apparently totally ignorant of any knowledge of the Israeli government.  During a tour of Israel he asked, "And just what is the role of the Knesset?"

Yes, the good Dr. had no idea that the Knesset was Israel’s basic legislative body. When it was explained, he seemed, in GQ’s word, “fatigued” with the answer.  "It sounds complex," he said. "Why don't they just adopt the system we Americans have?"

And this man wants to be America’s Commander in Chief.

Next we take a look at the junior senator from the great state of Texas, Senator Ted Cruz.  Now, those that know Mr. Cruz are aware that in college, he was a champion debater.  He has won national debating honors and is usually not susceptible to committing the classic political gaffes.  But it does have to be understood, that qualification does nothing for giving him the ability to discriminate, or to have a sense of proportion, or any semblance of the senator having even one ounce of humility

In an example of the senator showing his excess of confidence in his own rhetorical skills, Cruz decided to make one of his even more ridiculous statements.  He stated that “Those who recognized climate change were “the equivalent of the flat-Earthers.  It used to be accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.” The statement was so outlandish that some publications wondered if they should even print it.  The whole thing had the ring of a debater taking on the most ludicrous premise possible just for testing his own debating skills.

But he didn’t stop there.  One day later he commented. “There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers.”  There was no explanation or example for explaining from where this statement originated.  It was just offered as a flat statement that apparently everyone is supposed to accept as fact, just because it came from this Texas senator.

Obviously, no one is more impressed with Senator Cruz……. than Senator Cruz.

Then we have the Governor from Wisconsin, Scott Walker.

Governor Walker has emerged as the outsider candidate to beat, having won three state elections in four years and roundly defeating a major push from public sector unions.

Unfortunately, this has all seemed to have gone to his head. When asked how the governor would grapple with ISIS, the Sunni militants who have seized wide swaths of Iraq and Syria, Walker responded, “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe.” This answer was so out-of-place that even the National Review took him to the woodshed over it.

When asked to name the most significant foreign policy political decision of his lifetime. Walker responded bizarrely that it was when then-President Ronald Reagan shut down the Air Traffic Controllers union in 1982.

Reagan’s fight with the controllers union was obviously the perfect definition of a “domestic policy” issue, not a foreign policy decision.

This comment caused the GOP to cringe on a party-wide basis as the leaders began doubting the seriousness of Walker as a real candidate.  President Obama even commented that Walker needed to bone up on his foreign policy.  Walker appeared to take that advice as he scurried to seek out some Republican foreign policy heavies for a series of cram sessions.

Now we can’t go any further without looking at the junior senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul

In Senator Rand Paul’s first two interviews after his campaign announcement, he immediately got testy with a female news anchor who challenged him.  As one national publication put it, “Paul made quite possibly the most disastrous statement of any of the nominees so far. It didn’t even contain any words. It just went “Shhhhhh.”  Yep, the senator actually “shushed” a female network anchor and then he began giving her a lecture on how she should conduct herself in interviewing him.  As the publication noted, “Shhhhhhh…….That’s the sound of Paul’s female vote count deflating.”

Then we have the Arkansas huckster, Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee actually got the GOP’s silly season started in January, when he claimed in his book, titled God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy, that Beyoncé’s lyrics were “obnoxious and toxic mental poison.” Then he made it worse by attacking the First Couple for allowing their daughters to listen to Beyonce’s music. “I don’t see anything that might not be suitable for either a preteen or a teen in some of the lyrical content and choreography of Beyoncé,” he said.

The comments are totally out of line, especially since Huckabee is a friend of and occasional bassist for the loud-mouth gun-nut rocker, Ted Nugent, whose lyrics and imagery include personal threats against the president.

Huckabee is acting somewhat odd as an experienced politician with plenty of executive experience and campaign time under his belt.  However, he has spent the past six years as a Fox News host, giving him the same problem as Ben Carson: he confuses his own controversy as that of receiving positive support.

Huckabee again stepped in it last week when he implied that the president was not a Christian.   He advised potential military recruits to “wait a couple of years until we get a new commander-in-chief that will once again believe ‘one nation under God’ and believe that people of faith should be a vital part of the process of not only governing this country, but defending this country.” 

 

So, this man is running for the top job in a nation that believes in a separation of church and state.  But he is telling potential military recruits that the current president isn’t a Christian and they should be people of faith if they are going to fight to defend this country.  Obama just laughed off Huckabee’s comments during the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Finally, the only Republican woman presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina.

Fiorina has quickly become a polarizing figure since announcing her candidacy earlier this week with her embattled track record as Hewlett-Packard’s CEO taking the center stage.

Fiorina has been ridiculed for building her campaign around her questionable business acumen and so called ability to take charge. Before she was HP’s CEO, where she oversaw massive layoffs of 30,000 HP employees, she also held executive positions at AT&T and Lucent Technology.

Carly’s legacy as a high-profile tech executive has been marred by that controversial stint as HP’s CEO, which ended abruptly when she was fired in 2005. Her firing was highly politicized with the company facing record losses, extensive layoffs and rampant dysfunction among its ranks.

Fiorina led H-P with a largely unsuccessful merger with Compaq Computer in 2002.  But this merger was against the wishes of company founder Hewlett. Carly was eventually asked by the board of directors to step down and she left with $21 million in cash, plus stock and pension benefits worth another $19 million. But according to HP executive compensation rules, departing executives are entitled to no more than 2.99 times their base salary. Anything more than that requires stockholder approval. Fiorina's parachute was more than that, so the stockholders filed a class action suit.  However, a federal judge dismissed the suit in 2008. Fiorina later became a Fox Business Network contributor and a top economic advisor to Republican 2008 presidential candidate John McCain.

Most observers feel Carly is actually in the race for becoming the female Republican VP candidate, not the presidential nominee.

Copyright G.Ater  2015