If you had to vote for one of the Republican presidential contenders or…I don’t know, Hitler would become president…who would you vote for?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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That’s easy. Rick Santorum. He’d make for some fantastic seasons of The Daily Show.
Holy Jesus, NO!
Is this in the primary, or are we choosing a president?
I’d pick Bachmann or Paul. Every other candidate will be dubbed by the Big Corporate Media a serious conservative leader. Picture the kowtowing.
And frankly, I’d rather have a obviously freaky Republican president instead of one who could (with help) pass for normal. We’ve seen the limits of presidential power; President Bachmann or Paul would push power toward Congress, while a guy like Huntsman or Romney or (my worst nightmare, don’t count him out yet, Perry) would have much more success actually implementing dangerous, far-right policies.
I’d probably vote for Paul, because his differences with the conservative establishment are truly irreconcilable. Bachmann might respond, like Bush, to daily briefings with Bible quotes and pictures.
Ron Paul. He’s the only one who I’m confident wouldn’t start a war with Iran.
Don’t forget the legal, corporate kind bud! At least we’ll know what people were smoking if they re-elected him in 2016.
Paul. Not for policy reasons, but simply because he’d have no caucus and would be unable to get much done.
Assuming the congress remained divided, that is. With a GOP trifecta I’d go with…oh damn, is Roemer an option?
I wouldn’t vote. Paul would be a disaster on foreign policy. And the rest? Just no. If a gun were to my head? Huntsman
How would he be a disaster on foreign policy? He’s a non-interventionist not an isolationist.
Now foreign policy with regard to trade issues might be a different story.
I disagree. I think he is an isolationist, however I think he would be good with regard to trade issues. Supporting free trade yet opposing free trade agreements…sounds good to me.
The ironic part about Paul is that he’s not a supporter of immigration — he’s pretty hostile to it in the paleoconservative way. Yet he believes in free trade. It makes no sense. You can’t believe in free trade but not believe in the free movement of people.
Of course you can. Transnational corporations pay politicians a lot of money to believe in that every day.
Sure you can. Just because I believe in doing business with you doesn’t mean that I must also believe that you can come live in my house.
They range from unacceptable to frightening.
What’s interesting, though, is that a group called Americans Elect is trying to get a third party on the ballot in 50 states. They’ll be using an internet-based nominating process.
I’d vote for Huntsman, who appears genuinely and uniquely clueful about foreign policy is, at worst, no more invested in domestic insanity than his fellow candidates; if he were unavailable, my second choice would be Romney. I think Romney would be a weak and ineffectual President, and lacks the sort of commitment to his own ego that made Bush and Nixon such disasters.
After that, I’d vote for Perry, on account that I think he would perform similarly to George W. Bush, and though Bush was a historically terrible President, the country as able to survive eight years of him.
I know a lot of people find Paul appealing, but the evidence of racism (which goes well beyond his newsletters) and his general willingness to embrace paranoid, Bircher nonsense are very worrying. I think his idiosyncratic and expansive views of what the Constitution prohibits would lead the country into an inevitable Constitutional crisis if he were in the White House, one which would probably lead him to being removed from office.
From there, the choices get unthinkably bad. Bachmann is clearly unsuited to the office, and I think I might vote for her just because I think her staff would be forced to remove her from office on 25th Amendment grounds. At this point in the list, we’re at the point where an early, bloodless coup is looking like the best case scenario.
After that, it’s a deeply unpleasant choice between Rick Santorum, who was born in the wrong place and time to follow his true calling by joining the Spanish Inquisition or presiding over show trials in Mao’s China, and Newt Gingrich. But just because the choice is unpleasant doesn’t mean it’s not obvious: vote early and often for Santorum.
I see this criticism of Paul a lot and always in a way that is meant to separate him from the rest of the Republican field.
But, whatever his personal views, Ron Paul hasn’t run as a bigot. Certainly not in the way Gingrich, Cain, Bachman and Santorum have. Bigotry and Bircher nonsense have gone mainstream in the Republican party and Paul’s views on the Constitution are Tea Party doctrine. This is a field of candidates that are for racial-profiling, for perpetual war, for torture, and for throwing away the 4th amendment.
Paul separates himself from the pack by being a civil liberatarian as well as a fairly honest campaigner. So when choosing among this crowd, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I seriously have no idea. Not even Hitler as an alternative makes this easier.
Huntsman. I presume if Hitler was his chief rival things would’ve gotten pretty bad. The Presidency is about judgment and I would trust Huntsman to make enough good calls to at least keep Western Civilization alive.
Gary Johnson.
Why bother? The Fascists have already won.
Oh, I get it, it’s like one of those logic puzzles!
You know: normal people always know the truth, and tell the truth, vampires always lie, insane people believe the opposite of the truth, insane vampires believe the opposite of truth and lie about it…in one question: determine if someone is a vampire.
Santorum is a true conservitard, Romney always lies and SAYS he’s a conservitard, etc…
So, Romney. Because he’s probably lying. Could someone please ask him if he’s a vampire? It would clear up a lot of issues. KThxBai.
You guys know that Huntsman said he would invade Iran over suspected nukes, right?
Ron Paul. Congress would neuter him and we would be forced to have an honest national discussion about fundamental issues for the first time in my lifetime.
It would be a 4-year civics lesson – something this country could use. It would also re-establish the balance of power between Congress and POTUS – a not-insignificant thing to consider. In 2016.
Hitler did not act in a void; a lot of people made his reign possible. Similarly, if you elect an R president at this point you’re also empowering all the truly crazy people who come with them. And it’s not like the morality is a whole lot different. We’ve already got most of the field wanting to pit Americans against minorities, most of the field perfectly willing to consider the trappings of democracy (e.g., voting rights) a disposable means to an end, and one major candidate (Gingrich) who thinks an occasional Reichstag fire would be a good reminder for folks of the enemies that are after Us.
I suppose at least one of the current R field is a discernable improvement on Hitler, but I have to think about it.
Kovorkian.
Please. Unless you want a truly weak president…weaker even that Obama. Which might not be such a bad idea on some levels. But…naaaaahhhhh. Everybody would push him around and the strongest pushers would win.
China?
The American hawks?
Sorry…no go. Except for Bachmann, Perry and Santorum I would rather see any of the current crop in office rather than Huntsman.A t least in the case of Romney and Gingrich we would at least have a target, and Paul? It’d be a real revolution. Not necessarily pleasant or easy, but real change nevertheless.
AG
It really depends on what the Congressional candidates likely to ride his coattails looks like.
But since we’re playing yet another silly hypothetical game, let’s see. Who would be the most sane in the midst of a hostile Congress? Who would be the most sane in the midst of a supportive Congress?
Ron Paul in a hostile Congress. Just more gridlock.
One of these folks with a supportive Congress is like Bush 2003 but with failure written an order of magnitude higher.
I suppose that Michele Bachmann is the one most likely to gum up the works in two years and scare the crap out of even a supportive Congress. I hate the “make it worse so it gets better” strategies, but everyone else (and Hitler) would try to lock in power as quickly as possible with their Congress. Not sure that Bachmann could be Catherine the Great over all those elephant-sized male egos.
In Paul’s favor, the areas where he could do a lot of good – civil liberties, demilitarization, enforcement of drug laws – are areas where the President can do a lot unilaterally, whereas the areas where he would be a disaster – dismantling the welfare state, returning to the gold standard, and deregulating business – he cannot do much without a like-minded Congress. So if I could also get a Dem Congress, there would be definite advantages, even over Obama, who has been horrible on civil liberties, successful but unwilling to change direction in foreign policy, and breaking promises to his supporters on pot laws.
But Paul does not have the temperment of a President. He is an ideologue, and you need ideologues, but not in the White House. And the racist newsletters are a serious issue. Even if he does not agree with the sentiments, publishing them shows extremely poor judgment and high political cynicism, which you especially don’t want in ideologues.
So Buddy Roehmer. He seems willing to oppose some aspects of corporate power. Second choice, Johnson. Huntsman? I don’t respect serving Obama and then running against him, and I don’t see anything that favorable other than not being crazy.
I’d write in Palin.
All of them will try to get a Koch/Murdoch economic agenda enacted into law, but but she’s the one least likely to be able to succeed at that.
Ron Paul. No hesitation. Does he have the mettle to be President? No. But why should I care if a Republican in this day and age of extreme rightist views doesn’t have what it takes to be effective even if he or she manages to somehow get elected. I’m sorry, but if anyone on the current Republican slate of candidates wins at this period in our country’s history, I’ll have to agree with Rush Limbaugh — I’ll hope he or she fails. At least with Ron Paul as President he will boost a significant, pragmatically pacifist wing in an otherwise insanely militarist GOP.
For being otherwise good people, I can forgive the Quakers who owned the whaling fleets that almost exterminated whales worldwide. Same goes for libertarian, anti-militarists with a problematic history regarding race relations and some very bad ideas about economics.
Paul. He’d be mostly ineffective and divisive within the party, and is on my side on a few issues: drugwar, US imperialism, some civil liberties. And I think he’s intellectually the most honest of the bunch, in his own peculiar way. He’d probably nominate the least bad SCOTUS “justice”, too.
Paul would be the worst of the lot on the class war issues that matter to progressives.
And since in any scenario in which Paul wins both houses are Republican he and they would take America on such a lurch to the right as no one has imagined since Goldwater died.
He and they mean to take us all the way back to McKinley’s day, if they can.
Meanwhile, his isolationism would be made meaningless by an interventionist congress (both houses and both parties), establishment, and media.
Sure, he would not intentionally start a war.
But he would get slaughtered in a contest with the military-industrial complex over the extent and future of American military globalism.
So he would do no lasting good in that area and vastly more harm at home than any of those other loons he is competing with.
Meanwhile, the least awful on the class war would be Romney.
I would vote for him.
He is, after all, the real author of Obamacare.
And while Obamacare sucks compared to what we really wanted, Medicare for all, it comprises a lot of really good things, too.
And while everyone but Paul is an interventionist of one sort or another, Romney is probably the least lunatic and certainly the least stupid of the bunch.
Good point about the interventionist trope. Another issue people love about him is the drug war, but really…what’s he going to do to stop that? It’s more cultural than federal policy. Our best bet is for states to lead the way, and that makes the president irrelevant.
Seriously? Law enforcement and military intervention are the two areas where the president’s power is strongest. He picks the chief law enforcement officers. He decides on official drug enforcement policy. He decides where the Justice Department should direct it’s resources. He decides whether to pursue prosecutions against casual drug users. And he decides whether to challenge state initiatives such as legalized medical marijuana.
Yes, seriously. Now he could have a major impact on it globally, but domestically? Please. I guarantee you that they will not listen to the guidelines set. This is why decriminalization isn’t enough. It’s too ingrained, and only legalization will stop it.
Your argument makes no sense. Which war in your lifetime was started by Congress?
Presidents start wars and presidents commit troops to humanitarian interventions. There is no profit in Congress pushing for war. They’d have to get more than a majority in both Houses to vote for an action against the executive’s will and even then they could not force his hand.
Congress has only been actively “interventionist” in it’s support for a president’s decision. He gets most of his own party to back him and some fraction of the opposition.
I agreed he would not likely start a war, and that’s certainly a good thing.
But his larger anti-interventionist agenda would be a complete failure.
He would not get us out of NATO, Europe, the Middle East, or Asia and withdraw all our troops to the Western Hemisphere north of the equator.
He would not make gigantic cuts in the size and expense of the military-industrial complex.
He would not put a dent in either the theory or practice of “American exceptionalism.”
All of that would still be there the day he left.
And his anti-war reputation could even invite serious trouble in the Middle East or Central Asia.
Meanwhile, a congress that otherwise had no respect for him would delightedly join him in totally demolishing every progressive achievement since the start of the 20th Century.
Nice question, BooMan. Thank you.