The Republican presidential landscape looks terrible as many fringe and unpopular conservatives are running next year. Particularly, it’s mainly younger, newish Republicans looking to gain notoriety in some way or another. The problem here is that these new guys want to make as much crazy noise as possible.
This problem is derived from something larger: the GOP is dying off, quite literally. The old white Republicans are becoming too old. What we’re left with are people like Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, the list goes on.
Guardian columnist Jeb Lund brilliantly outlines this phenomenon using satire and actual opinion. He believes that most of these guys don’t really care about being president, but are just trying to increase their pedigree. Here’s a short list of reasons he compiled to explain why these Republicans are running.
They’re auditioning for a seven-figure commentator’s contract at Fox News.
They’re going through an elaborate, performative book tour for a ghost-written paperweight they spent all of three hours dictating vague material for, to be sold at $24.99 a pop.
They’re auditioning for a senior cabinet position.
They’re driving up their speaker’s fee for corporate conferences.
They’re raising a giant war chest for some other future project.
They’re trying to drive the presidential election discussion further toward the fringe.
There doesn’t seem to be a single shred of actual leadership among the bunch when considering this list. It’s all about heightening one’s own personal position. And, honestly, many of the Republican presidential hopefuls are unlikable people.
Lund noted that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is running for president next year. Jindal is more disliked in his home state, which is very Republican, than President Barack Obama, which is quite strange considering Jindal’s repertoire. As Lund puts it, “You’d expect better from a man who’s toed the line of every birther assertion since 2009, aped the conservative ‘kill ‘em all’ foreign policy, . . . and demanded we repeal Obamacare.”
Then there’s taxpayer-money wasting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and alleged felon former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Each of these guys are suspected criminals, yet they are toying with the idea of running for president. Christie is a noted political bully, and Perry is a self-proclaimed idiot who once compared his brain to a chicken pot pie.
The amount of terrible Republican candidates is extensive. Each one is a known evangelical kook, a liar, a suspected criminal, but they’re all hopeless idiots. This is the new crop of conservatives, and it’s already a rotten bunch. The Grey Old Party is dying and being replaced by the insane, fringe party.
