THEN THERE WERE 4:

Did you watch the Florida Republican debates? well too bad if you did­n’t because this was one of the best com­e­dy shows I have seen in a long time.

There are only four men left in the run­ning, and by the way they are all white, not that it’s cru­cial­ly impor­tant to you but con­sid­er­ing that the coun­try has become so diverse I would have thought that the Republican Party would field a bet­ter non-white can­di­date than Herman Caine, but that’s just my opin­ion , you may have a dif­fer­ent view.

CANDIDATES

(1) Ron Paul:

This live­ly old­er gen­tle­man seem like a lov­able grand­fa­ther who speaks in cir­cles, he is wit­ty, fun­ny and real­ly has a great plat­form that res­onates with well with younger more ide­al­is­tic vot­ers, his chal­lenge is, is the sup­port he has enough to con­vince the Republican estab­lish­ment to adopt parts of his plat­form into the repub­li­can gen­er­al elec­tion plat­form? Dr. Paul a med­ical Doctor and con­gress­man from Texas real­ly is a lib­er­tar­i­an, he favors small gov­ern­ment and argues stri­dent­ly for indi­vid­ual rights, repub­li­cans for the record favors states rights not indi­vid­ual rights. The largest hand­i­cap to Paul’s break­ing through the glass ceil­ing in his par­ty, is his belief that America’s mil­i­tary should not be used in for­eign inter­ven­tions, he wants all wars end­ed and all of Americas ser­vice mem­bers abroad brought home. This does not res­onate well with The neo-cons in the repub­li­can party.

(2) Rick Santorum:

Rick Santorum two-time United States Senator from Pennsylvania is an ultra con­ser­v­a­tive who believes strong­ly in the pro­tec­tion of the state of Israel,he argues for a super pow­er­ful mil­i­tary and stat­ed unabashed­ly that he would not cut a pen­ny from the pen­tagon’s bud­get, even has he argues vocif­er­ous­ly for cuts in sec­tors that impacts the lives of the most vul­ner­a­ble amongst us. Santorum a devout Catholic is bull­ish on Immigration , he seem to talk him­self into rages of anger as he address­es the caus­es he believe in, one won­ders if Santorum’s total­i­tar­i­an all or noth­ing views, are not his great­est imped­i­ment to being tak­en seri­ous­ly, and by the way even though he claims he is a devout chris­t­ian Santorum is a liar, he cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly claimed he did not say black peo­ple while address­ing the top­ic of food stamps in Iowa, when there is ample video evi­dence that he did just what he says he did not do, I can under­stand a thief, I can always pro­tect my valu­ables from a thief , I absolute­ly can­not stand a liar.

(3)Newt Gingrich:

Newt Gingrich for­mer Republican con­gress­man from Georgia and speak­er of the House of Representatives for four years of the Clinton Presidency, a man wide­ly believed to be a gringe, and a sour-puss. Republican estab­lish­ment oper­a­tives believe Gingrich if nom­i­nat­ed by the Republican Party would be a train wreck for Republicans come November. Many believe if Gingrich is nom­i­nat­ed , not only will President Obama be returned to the White House, but it would be a dis­as­ter for down tick­et can­di­dates on the bal­lot all the way down to munic­i­pal­i­ties. Gingrich through­out his polit­i­cal car­rear has been bedev­iled with accu­sa­tions of infi­deli­ty and has even been accused to have served his wife with divorce papers whilst she was in a hos­pi­tal recu­per­at­ing from an ill­ness. Gingrich has vehe­ment­ly denied these accu­sa­tions, Gingrich has been mar­ried three times. In fair­ness to Newt it is not out of the ordi­nary for some­one to be mar­ried mul­ti­ple times, the dis­con­nect is not with the amount of times he was mar­ried but with the rea­sons for the three Marriages. There are oth­er bag­gage in Gingrich’s back­ground includ­ing his threats to lock down the Federal Government over bud­get talks with the Clinton White House, many argue that it was a ego­ma­ni­a­cal tem­pera­men­tal out­burst from Gingrich because he was not invit­ed by then President Clinton to the front of Air Force One nei­ther on the way to, or back from Israel where they attend­ed the funer­al of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Gingrich had all but agreed that he was peev­ed at the President and as such decid­ed to pun­ish the whole coun­try because he was slight­ed. Gingrish was harsh­ly crit­i­cized bu many even in his own par­ty for being child­ish and petty.

(seat­tle sun​times​.com)

Gingrich is also accused of hypocrisy for per­se­cut­ing President Clinton for a sex­u­al dal­liance with White House Intern Monica Lewinsky while he was also cheat­ing on his wife. According to Marianne Gingrich Newt’s sec­ond wife when she brought up Gingrich’s hypocrisy to him, he report­ed­ly told her,” peo­ple should do as I says not as I do”. That air of supe­ri­or­i­ty has been a part of Gingrich’s per­sona to the point Santorum accused him of always being grandiose. In the end Gingrich was lit­er­al­ly ran out of the House of Representative by his own cau­cus over ethics vio­la­tions. His arch neme­sis Mitt Romney likes to remind every­one of the lat­ter on the cam­paign trail.

(4)Willard Mitt Romney

Then there is for­mer ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and ex Massachuset Governor Mitt Romney. Mister Romney did very well for him­self in the busi­ness world, as a result he has pegged his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on his expe­ri­ence and suc­cess­es in busi­ness, he brags that as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist he has cre­at­ed over a hun­dred Thousand Jobs. The prob­lem with Mitt’s strat­e­gy is that experts are com­ing out of the wood-work explain­ing that what Romney did at Bain Capital, as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist had every­thing to do with gut­ting busi­ness­es, tak­ing all Bain could get then forc­ing the com­pa­ny into bankruptcy,and noth­ing to do with job creation.Texas Governor and for­mer repub­li­can can­di­date char­ac­ter­ized what Romney did as quote ” vul­ture cap­i­tal­ism“end quote. inter­est­ing­ly enough Romney does not talk about his record as gov­er­nor of Massachuset one of the nation’s most lib­er­al states​.One won­ders whether Governor Romney feels the nation will sim­ply ignore that he is run­ning as a con­ser­v­a­tive after being the Governor of one of America’s most lib­er­al states. President Obama has repeat­ed­ly said his Federally man­dat­ed health-care plan was craft­ed from Governor Romney’s health plan in Massachuset. Romney has vehe­ment­ly argued that he would not have imposed his plan on the entire coun­try, whether this will gain trac­tion in a gen­er­al elec­tion I don’t know, what I do know is that it makes it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for Romney to draw a sharp enough con­trast between him­self and pres­i­dent Obama in an elec­tion year when the coun­try is deeply polar­ized and the repub­li­can par­ty has been pushed far to the right by the tea par­ty. Romney’s repub­li­can rivals for the nom­i­na­tion are not mak­ing it any eas­i­er for him, Santorum in par­tic­u­lar , has made it the cor­ner­stone of his attack on Romney. Santorum feels that soon­er or lat­er Newt Gingrich will implode and he will be seen as the con­ser­v­a­tive alter­na­tive to Gingrich, hence he con­tin­ues to plug away at the con­nec­tion between pres­i­dent Obama’s health planned dubbed Obama-care and Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachuset dubbed Romney-care.

CONCLUSION

While the pres­i­dent was criss­cross­ing the coun­try talk­ing to work­ers about income inequal­i­ty, and high­light­ing the inher­rent injus­tice in the tax code which has Warren Buffett pay­ing a low­er tax rate than his sec­re­tary, repub­li­can mega mil­lion­aire Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich and the rest of the repub­li­cans were argu­ing about who had mil­lions invest­ed in Fannie May and Freddie Mac, or who would have a colony of Americans liv­ing on the moon by 2020 ‚nev­er mind we are broke and bor­row­ing mon­ey from the Chinese to pay our bills.

President Obama has posi­tioned him­self as a cham­pi­on and a fight­er for the 99%, whether his fresh­ly pop­ulist mes­sage will res­onate with a pub­lic weary from a slug­gish econ­o­my, lay-offs, and for­clousures is yet to be decided,there are many events  which may beat Obama in the fall of 2012 , Europe melt­ing down, Israel attack­ing Iran, a ter­ror attack on the home­land, a major blun­der on Obama’s part and a pletho­ra of oth­er events. If none of the afore­men­tioned hap­pen, President Obama will be guar­an­teed anoth­er term in the white house if this is the best the repub­li­can par­ty can do.