Age of the Geek

Ready or not, here it comes
     A movie about rampaging dinosaurs is the king of the box office. A violent video game called “Doom” is inciting a moral panic among clueless busybodies. And now we have a Bush and a Clinton campaigning for the White House.
     We are officially living in the early nineties again.
     I’ve been avoiding touching on the 2016 election because... well... it’s only June of 2015. There’s going to be a whole year and a half of this nonsense between now and voting day.
     But it seems that Jeb Bush has finally decided he’s raised enough money that he can officially announce his candidacy, so now that the Republican Party finally has a serious candidate, let’s do a rundown of the clown car that has become the Republican primary race before they start to get whittled down.
Ted Cruz
     First out of the gate this election cycle was Ted Cruz, a guy whose political career has been defined by his willingness to grind the gears of government to a halt so he can point at it and say how broken it is. This was most exemplified by his role in the 2013 shutdown, which put 800,000 people on unpaid leave and cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars. Because when you’re trying to convince people that the Affordable Care Act is bad for the economy, the logical thing to do is create an actual economic disaster to make your point.
     Cruz’s pyrrhic tactics make him popular with the hardcore right, but have done little to endear him to the more pragmatic side of the GOP establishment. Right now the only purpose he’s serving his party is by making other Republicans look moderate in comparison.
Rand Paul
     The libertarian version of Ted Cruz, Paul is also all about grand gestures and appealing to a specific portion of the base. In this case, that portion is the subset of people that support both legalized marijuana and unrestricted access to guns.
     Like most libertarians, Paul’s political positions bounce between extremes on both the left and the right. This doesn’t make him a moderate though. It just gives both sides a reason to dismiss him.
Marco Rubio
     On paper there really doesn’t seem to be any reason Rubio wouldn’t do well appealing to voters. His political positions hit all the right notes, no pun intended, and he doesn’t have the habit of making a spectacle of himself like the previous two.
     On the other hand, anybody likely to vote for Rubio is probably more likely to vote for Jeb Bush, and Bush is almost certainly going into this race with a lot more money.
Ben Carson
     Politics isn’t brain surgery, which one would think might give an advantage to the retired neurosurgeon. However, odds are that this is the first time you’ve heard of Carson’s name. And if it isn’t, it’s probably because you managed to catch one of the times Carson went on television and then said something he had to immediately apologize for.
     Whether it’s associating gay people with pedophiles, claiming that atheists have no morals, or saying that the Affordable Care Act is the “worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” Carson seems to suffer from a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease and I’m afraid the 24-hour spotlight of a presidential campaign would only worsen that affliction.
Carly Fiorina
     Like Mitt Romney before her, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard seems to be operating under the belief that giving yourself huge bonuses while shipping jobs overseas is an endearing quality to potential voters. I suppose Romney did get through the primary, but I have a feeling running on her business record won’t get Fiorina nearly as far.
Mike Huckabee
     After a failed run in 2008, Huckabee had enough sense not to try again in 2012. I’m not sure what he thinks has changed since then to make him run in 2016, but it’s not his political positions nor the rejection of them by the majority of the voting demographic.
Rick Santorum
     Also back for another round after 2012, Rick Santorum has returned to his position as underdog in the primary. It’s a position Santorum says he’s comfortable with, which is good because that’s where he’ll be staying.
George Pataki
     Like Jon Huntsman before him, George Pataki is this year’s token “Republican that Democrats kind of like.” He’s pragmatic, socially liberal and seems to know how to get things done. Three traits that will likely torpedo his primary chances.
Lindsey Graham
     With Congress’ popularity running somewhere between “cockroaches” and “nuclear war,” it’s surprising that anybody, particularly from the House of Representatives, would have the guts to run for the White House.
     Sure, it’s expected from the Tea Party guys like Ted Cruz, but Graham is pure establishment Republican. He probably should know better.
     Graham suffers from the same problem Cruz does, just from the opposite side. He’s butted heads with the Tea Party too many times to gain the favor he’d need to make it through a primary race.
Rick Perry
     The former governor of Texas returns and has apparently adopted the Superman philosophy of disguises. I don’t know if he thinks donning a pair of thick glasses is going to make people not realize he’s the same guy that spectacularly bombed his way out of the last primary, but I’ve got three reasons why I’m glad he’s running. The first, it will mean another generous donation to the Iowan economy. Second, it will inevitably be comedy gold. And the third... ummm... oops.
Donald Trump
     Speaking of comedy gold, Donald Trump must really like Jon Stewart because I can’t imagine why he would give such an amazing parting gift to the comedian for his final weeks on “The Daily Show.”
 
     So that’s that. It’s possible other contenders may decide to run, but for now it seems like the field is set. Next week I’ll do a rundown for the Democrats, but that’ll be a much shorter column.
     Let the games begin.     
 
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and hopes tie-dye shirts are the next 90s fad to come back into style.