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The governor from North Dakota was the only one who seemed like an actual conservative to me. He actually came off as a thoughtful and authentic person. Chris Christie would be a decent president, but has no chance of winning the cult over during the primary. Nikki Haley performed well, but doesn’t seem to have consistent beliefs. Vivek is insane, which is already Trump’s lane. He won’t beat Trump, so I expect him or Kari Lake to be Trump’s VP nominee.
Burgum: Pure establishment crony. Ardently supported lockdowns in his state.
Chris Christie: Permanent sour grapes after not getting a cabinet position under #45, somehow thinks supporting gender affirming care on children is something conservatives will get behind.
Nikki Haley: Burgum in high heels. Plays identity politics when she thinks it’ll help her candidacy, though it never well.
Imagine thinking Vivek “knows nothing about international affiars” when compared to a person who has gotten us into a $4B+ proxy war with Russia while enriching the fortunes of the Clown Prince of Ukraine. Would Ramaswamy do better than mashpotatobrain? Possibly not, but he couldn’t do worse. Why is it so hard for #46 to prioritize his own constituency over a post-Soviet breadbasketcase for even 10 minutes? Is it because Hawaii is so deep blue he can take them for granted?
Verdict: if Wesley H thinks it’s a good candidate…it’s a bad candidate.
If a nonentity like Burgum, or Haley, or Christie become the person rigged to win the primaries, then RFK Jr is probably the best candidate for the generals.
Lauren B: MAGA>everything. Literally everything. Law and order doesn’t matter. Morals don’t matter. Facts don’t matter. Ignorance is bliss.
Wesley–
Lecture me about morals! And facts! And Law and Order! Help cure me from my cult! You’re so much smarter than me, and the ecosystem you live in is truly flourishing under #46. I mean, homicides are back to 1980s levels and you want to tell me about “law and order”. So funny.
Make sure to wear a balaclava when you bash me upside the head at my next Deplorable Rally. Actually, never mind–you probably won’t need to. As long as you have the right politics, you’ll get nothing more than a slap on the wrist…which in turn explains why Democrat-run areas are turning into “Max Max” facsimiles.
if not balaclavas, are you at least putting your mask on again? Get ready–it’s time to scare people again so the uniparty can work with their friends in corporate America to rig a bunch more elections.
Oh Lauren, I’d be scared to live in your alternate reality. I like Deplorable Rally, I’ll start using that one. Hillary truly hit the nail on the head. It’s funny how basically everything she predicted about what would happen if Trump won came true. I wish she had been better on the campaign trail.
Wesley, you lost me at “Chris Christie would be a decent president”, and “Vivek is insane.” A little exaggeration there …
There is something to be said about a person who’s able to work across the aisle and get reelected as a Republican in a blue state. I’d be just as impressed if a Democrat were to win the governor’s office in Indiana, and get reelected four years later. He was also one of the few on the stage who will tell the truth even when he knows he’ll get booed.
Vivek is insane and I’m not exaggerating at all. He’s actually somehow more horrific than Trump. He seems to know absolutely nothing about international affairs, and the importance of the United States standing by our allies. He thinks climate change is a hoax, yet wants to be my generations new leader. Good luck with that lol.
And as Greg said below, he comes off as an entitled frat boy. I used to have friends like him and realized quickly how toxic people like him are. Like Trump, he’s a narcissist who craves attention. He’ll always put himself before the country, and we saw how that worked out in January 2021.
Nikki Haley stood out to me. I think she’s the only candidate up there that could have broad appeal.
Vivek came off as an entitled frat boy.
Growing up in Indiana, the vast majority of my friends and neighbors were Republicans but we all got along just fine. This has all changed, as today’s Republicans have overwhelming indicated they will support Donald Trump for President, even if he is convicted in one or more of the criminal cases he currently faces. This is no longer about being a proud American or patriot, it is totally about authoritarian rule, with a Christian Nationalism flavor.
I’d argue that their voters have stopped caring about the Christian part. Mike Pence or Tim Scott would be doing better if that mattered anymore. Their base views politics like sports now. They want MAGA to win no matter how morally repugnant the candidate is. “Christian values” (or criminal convictions) aren’t important as long as they own the libs. It’s seriously disgusting. I can’t imagine being so obsessed with a politician that I’d fly their flag in my yard alongside the American flag. They get obsessed with people like Trump and Vivek like teenage girls obsessing over Taylor Swift.
Wesley, thank you for your comment. Christian Nationalism is not about religion or Christianity; it is about supremacy (generally white), wrapping itself in a flag of Christianity to try to look legitimate. As a Catholic, I have seen so many in my own church who have abandoned the Gospels of Jesus for the ramblings of a man who has never once exhibited any sort of Christian behavior, yet they view him as the second coming of Christ.
What’s hilarious is that you think Christian nationalism exists but can’t see how it’s nothing more than a group of people who normally disagree on 60% doctrinal, going up against a pseudo-religious cult called Wokeism that elevates humans to divine status. At least, in the vying for power we see among the Wokies, along comes relentless violence akin to the Bolshevik/National Socialist machinations of yesteryear to which the Donkey Party increasingly resembles.
Mike Pence has admitted that problems in the US aren’t his priority. Ramaswamy mopped the floor with him
Who, by your estimate, is coming the closest to embodying the “Gospels of Jesus”?
Still not a Republican, never would be–loathe the neocons. Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr or even Andrew Yang are preferable to Pence and Haley and Burgum and Hutchinson. But all this lawfare against #45 manages to do is reaffirm to a growing number of us that trump has the true enemy pinned down to a tee. He’s a deeply flawed man, yet by going after him and not looking at the substance of his criticisms that make him so popular, they just keep making him stronger.
All but two of the candidates said, if elected, they would pardon Trump for his crimes. None of them, however, mentioned (or perhaps even knew) that for a pardon to be executed, the recipient must acknowledge his or her crimes. Trump would never do that, because he is never wrong. Therefore, I can only conclude that the candidates who would pardon Trump were only pandering to his MAGA cult followers, which at best account for less than a third of the national vote. I would much rather vote for a candidate who knows this math, and would be willing to tell those folks to go jump off a cliff.
In the meantime, what are really falling off the cliff is the basic social cohesion and fundamental sense of lawfulness that characterized American cities as recently as 2019. Do you enjoy the normalization of street-defecation, or zombified people wandering into traffic, or having to get permission from a clerk at a store to unlock a plastic sheath so you can grab shampoo?
Or are you just one of the many useful idiots that rationalizes this? Who exactly is teetering on the edge of a cliff?
Some people simply are able to comprehend fundamental concepts. “Falling of a cliff” is accidental, whereas “jumping off a cliff” in intentional. I want the MAGA cult followers to purposefully jump.
Lauren, your man Trump was President in 2019. He did absolutely nothing to calm racial tensions or violence when it erupted across the United States after the George Floyd murder. How do you rationalize that Trump has no blame in what happened there?
And basic social cohesion is falling off a cliff. Social media, COVID isolation, and a dysfunctional political system have all contributed to that. You know what contributed to it the most though? A man who broke every social norm that exits in the history of the US Presidency. If you can’t see that your eyes aren’t open.
Lauren B. is Indiana’s Ann Coulter.
You insult Ann Coulter with that observation.