Republican Candidates for 2016 Race

I love that Tim Kaine speaks spanish. As much as I love Julian Castro, and want him on a national ticket someday, he doesn't speak it fluently.

 

I would have voted for pretty much any of the Republican candidates who could conceivably have gotten the nomination (Lindsey Graham was my personal favorite out of all of them) - EXCEPT for Trump. I will not, under any circumstances, vote for Trump.

That said, I think I will vote for Gary Johnson. I am certainly no Libertarian, but I consider him the most acceptable alternative. I realize he might not have a very realistic chance of being elected, but hey, you never know. I have decided that it's best to find somebody to vote FOR - not necessarily one to vote AGAINST. Does that make any sense?

 

Well, sure. Never vote for someone just because you don't think they're as bad as the other candidate. That's how you get piss poor options in future elections. If I vote for somebody, it's because I believe in what they say, and what they can do.

 

I know perfectly well what a straw man argument is, and you just made another one. You keep shifting goalposts.

You somehow claim that a President cannot serve two masters. Actually, they serve over 300 million masters, including the Constitution. If you believe that the job of a President doesn't involve balancing the disparate interests of everyone in the whole country, often in conflict, then it is you who really don't know what a President is.

Again, your original claim was that Hillary doesn't give a rat's ass about the Constitution. To try to support that, you claimed her exclusive loyalty to some of her would-be constituents. That was your first straw man argument, because such limited loyalty wouldn't imply that she would have literally no interest in following the Constitution, even if it were true, which it isn't.

Now you claim that if she were to serve two masters, she couldn't give a rat's ass about the Constitution. That is your second straw man argument, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Presidency. In fact, a President must serve many masters, none to the exclusion of the Constitution.

Anyway, Hillary is neither bought and paid for by corporations nor is she beholden to them to the exclusion of all other interests, including the Constitution.

TLDR = If you're going to claim that Hillary doesn't give a rat's ass about the Constitution, you're going to have to show that she's never cared about it one way or another. Good luck with that!

 

I think what turns me off Trump as much as anything else, isn't necessarily the radicalism of his views (which I admit are extreme). I simply don't think he knows how to be President. I mean that in the most literal sense. What does he know about politics? Does he have a fucking CLUE about what the President's responsibilities might be? I'm deathly afraid that he doesn't. Trump, quite literally, does not know what to do if he were ever elected President.

I mean, I have these visions of Trump winning the election, then sitting down at his desk in the Oval Office and thinking to himself..."So what do I do now?"

 

And who would that be this November?

 

Whatever dude. Whatever helps you sleep at night. But don't come crying to me when we find ourselves in more corporation enriching wars and not less. If you think a Clinton or a Bush or a Trump cares about "the people" you are deluding yourself. Follow the money, honey.

 

Werd

 

As if!

 

For me, it's Hillary Clinton. Your mileage may vary.

 

Exactly. He wants to run the country like another of his businesses. And along those lines, his idea of getting the country out of debt would likely be gutting essential services, ie trimming the fat, but the moment something goes south, he'll likely point fingers and twiddle his thumbs.

 

I honestly don't understand this. Donald Trump is the antithesis of everything Rand Paul stands for. I don't agree with many of Rand Paul's policies (I'm with him on ending our interventionist foreign policy, excessive drone strikes, targeted assassinations, and domestic surveillance) but I can respect him for having a set of beliefs he's willing to fight for. Trump is an opportunist who believes in nothing, cares about nothing, and understands nothing about either domestic or foreign policy. He's a walking talking advertisement for Trump and nothing else, and that's the only person he cares about.

That's been my goal here, because it scares me that so many people seem to be willing to vote for Trump out of tradition because he's running as a Republican, even though he embodies none of the values conservatives and Republicans or Libertarians believe in. Don't just vote for the guy with the (R) beside his name out of complacency, because unlike the other Republican or Libertarian candidates, who I also have strong disagreements with, this guy I think will legitimately ruin the economy and our foreign relations, and experts agree on that. I'm not asking you to vote for Hillary, but for god's sake don't vote for a maniac like Trump just because you're locked into voting Republican. He's not a typical Republican. He's much more dangerous.

 

Me, too. She wasn't my choice in the primary, but she is now. Interesting, informative piece on her: https://thepolicy.us/thinking-about-hillary-a-plea-for-reason-308fce6d187c#.xy701ntt3

 

While I don't support Trump I think it is reasonable to consider our current and recent past foreign relations to be pretty bad if not awful (I believe many experts believe they compel us to spend so much on the military and be so interventionist) so it can be difficult to see how he could make things much worse.

 

Trump is just a vague and bumperstickery as Obama was with his "Hope" and "Change" nonsense. Funny how the same people who hated Obama for being simplistic and nonspecific love Trump for being the same way.

 

The difference being that whether you agreed with them or not, Obama had actual detailed policy proposals to back up the slogans while Trump does not. The vague slogans are as deep as he gets.

 

True but the people who hated Obama weren't interested in his policies. Its as if they prefer ignorance.

 

If I were running--I'd push for doubling NASA's budget--so you can all just write me in.

 

Trump has more in common with Rand Paul than he does with Hillary Clinton. At least they both somewhat understand that the Constitution is a timeless document. I don't vote by party, though I am in one, but I stand for principles and I will vote for the person who can win AND has the closest principles to mine.

 

As long as it's not...

The First Amendment

The Second Amendment (at least the NRA's insane no gun control whatsoever interpretation of it, but Mr, Tough Guy wussed out on that)

The Fourth Amendment

The Fifth Amendment or the

The Fourteenth Amendment

Donald Trump Has Now Trashed the 1st Amendment, the 5th Amendment, and the 14th Amendment

Damon Root | Nov. 20, 2015 11:42 am

Another day, another rank attack on basic constitutional principles from Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Trump's latest comes in response to last week's terrorist attacks in Paris. "Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything," Trump told Fox News, but the U.S. will have "absolutely no choice" but to shut down some mosques. Trump also said he was open to the idea of forcing Muslim-Americans to carry a special government identification card and forcing Muslim-Americans to register in a national government database. Can FDR-style internment camps for Muslim-Americans be far behind?

So much for the First Amendment and its pesky language guaranteeing the free exercise of religion.

Regrettably, this is not Donald Trump's first assault on the Constitution. In addition to his calls for suppressing religious freedom, Trump has repeatedly trashed the 14th Amendment as part of his campaign to suppress immigration. On top of that, Trump has repeatedly trashed the Fifth Amendment, endorsing a boundless definition of eminent domain power that would effectively delete the words "for public use" from the Constitution, thereby granting government officials (and their crony capitalist allies like Trump) a virtual blank check to seize whatever private property they happen to want.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/11/20/donald-trump-has-now-trashed-the-1st-ame