The Republican primaries are settling into a bleak wasteland of unappealing candidates. In a mad rush to appeal to "values voters", they're abandoning their core constituency of fiscal conservatives who are more interested in sound economic policy than their neighbors' bedrooms.
- Mitt Romney: The governor so liberal that even Massachusetts likes him. He somehow combined the Orwellian nanny state of socialized health care with the worst possible corporate pandering in order to force people who live in that state to pay for health insurance whether they want it or not. And then bragged about it. I truly don't care that he's a Mormon. I care very much that he's a jackass.
- John McCain: The Little Engine That Could. Undoubtedly a good man who truly loves his country, but just can't resist the urge to limit free speech when it's convenient to him.
- Rudy Giuliani: Desperately wants to be Mitt but just can't bring himself to do it.
- Ron Paul: I'm ignoring him for the moment because if I admit that he exists then I can't rant about the lack of good candidates.
- Fred Thompson: I admit that I don't know much about him. His campaign kept calling me and then hanging up, and when they finally spoke, I found myself talking to a woman who pronounced "momentum" as "monumentium". She didn't know much about him either. In a last-ditch effort to sway me, she suddenly blurted out that he is against gay marriage and human cloning - which didn't have much to do with his Iraq policies that we'd been discussing.
- Mike Huckabee: "Vote for me and I will make everything you don't want to do illegal."
Is this what we've been reduced to? This is the cream of our crop, that these our best hope for the leadership of our country? This can't be so. There have to be some decent choices somewhere who haven't stepped forward yet. If I didn't believe that, I'd give up all together.
A bit of advice to the challengers: the term for economic liberals who are socially conservative is "populist". If you want to be one, then run as one. Don't claim to be a Republican simply because you think we're too dumb to notice the difference and that we'll vote for you anyway because your tie has an elephant on it.
