The GOP Presidential Clown Show To Date
Then-President Donald Trump and Florida's GOV. Ron DeSantis hold a COVID-19 and storm preparedness roundtable in Belleair, Florida, on July 31, 2020.
If you’re anything like me, the presidential election cycle gives you the dry heaves. The older I get, the less I believe any of these fools and what they’re selling ― on either side.
But I must exercise the duty for which my ancestors spilled blood and vote for someone.
In recent years, my urge to hit the ballot box is less about voting for a person and more about voting against a person. Ever since Barack Obama wrapped up his tenure, presidential elections have been more about voting to get stabbed in the buttcheek or shot in the foot.
Sleeping in on Election Day feels like the best option, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
As a (sensible) Black man in America, Democrats are pretty much always more attractive than the Republican options. Given the current roster of GOP presidential hopefuls slated to challenge President Joe Biden, not a damn thing has changed.
From my perspective, Biden has two principal challenges to overcome in 2024: He’s the oldest sitting president, and he will turn 82 years old a few weeks after the election. His mental and physical faculties will certainly be the biggest target on his back. (Hitting the ground, as he did recently, won’t help.)
The second is Donald Trump, and his devoted supporter base ― devoid of reason and intellect, or consciously happy to give up both to see him serve his “stolen” second term.
For all his shortcomings, Biden remains more attractive than Trump and every other GOP competitor. It’s a political bromide to suggest that the next election is “the most important one of our lives!!!” But I do think our country’s current culture wars ― perpetuated in large part by Trump, who curb-stomped decades of social progress inadvertently and otherwise ― could take a turn in the wrong direction if Biden is unseated in 2024.
I’m an advocate of knowing one’s enemy, so below is the listing of official candidates vying for the GOP presidential nomination as of June 7. Hold your noses as you read.
Chris Christie: The former governor of New Jersey filed his paperwork Tuesday. It’s his second time at the races following a failed 2016 run.
Christie was an outspoken supporter of Trump before turning on him after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that everyone knows was Trump’s fault. Supporting Trump at all after, say, his 1992 appearance in ”Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” should invalidate Christie out the gate.
These days, Christie pops off at the mouth about Trump every chance he gets, along with his name recognition, as if that might get him somewhere in this race. As a candidate who respects the LGBTQ community and supports abortion in the case of rape or endangered mothers, he’s further to the left than many of his competitors.
Christie’s best reason for existence in this race is to split support that could keep Ron DeSantis away from the nomination. (He apparently has the much-vaunted Stephen A. Smith vote.)
Mike Pence: For many he is the Judas to Trump’s wack messiah, Pence formally launched his bid Wednesday.
The former vice president, who somehow managed to cosplay as a Trump supporter for years before finally breaking rank after the insurrection, Pence is as far to the rightas a politician can get ― so opposed to anything resembling fun that his own sexuality has become a punchline.
Thing is, Pence has negative charisma. He’s a useless vessel of evangelical morality in a party in which his former boss jacked all of that up. He has the attention of the elderly widow Edna in Iowa who calls City Hall when she sees a rainbow flag hanging from a business in town.
Pence isn’t even a paper tiger; he’s a paper kitten. If he gets elected, I’ll eat this computer.
Tim Scott: I just wrote a piece about Scott and other curious ethnic minorities who want to pretend racism is a thing of the past. The only Black Republican in the entire senate, Scott is an unseasoned rice cake of a candidate pushing the ecumenical angle: pro-life and anti-gay marriage.
He might court the support of other Black Republicans insistent on showing the world that even sellouts can go high. But there aren’t too many Black Republicans, and the demographic still smarting from eight years of a brotha in the White House likely isn’t keen on putting another one there. I think folks who’d vote for Scott would vote for Pence first. And, as I stated above, no one is voting for Pence.
Nikki Haley: The first to step up to bat against Trump, Haley seems to have an identity problem ― and not just the perception by many that she’s spent her political career downplaying her Sikh Indian ethnicity.
Nimarata Randhawa seems a bit too civil, too even-tempered, to bust a grape in this battle of fruits. In 2016, Trump single-handedly turned the GOP nomination race into the world’s least amusing circus, and that’s just not Haley’s game.
Unlike many of her competitors though, the former South Carolina governor never truly licked Trump’s boots, and openly criticized him despite vowing to rock with party lines to back him before making the decision to jump in the race herself.
Democrats have proven they aren’t ready to elect a woman to the presidency. Do you think a Republican electorate that barely wants them to have control of what’s going on in their own bodies would?
Asa Hutchinson: I had to do some research to learn who Hutchinson is, which isn’t a great sign. He’s a former governor of Arkansas and congressman who worked in the George W. Bush administration.
Hutchinson’s strength is that he has more real-world political experience in the Republican Party than most of his competitors. But he seems pretty right of center, no one knows who he is and, in a party where being noisy is the move, he’d better do something to distinguish himself quickly.
Larry Elder: A waste of my keystrokes. Next.
Vivek Ramaswamy: Had to do research on this dude as well. Ramaswamy is a biotech company founder with zero political background outside of almost running for senate in Ohio last year.
He has that typical first-generation immigrant mindset that underrepresented minorities in America simply need to get their shit together, calling affirmative action the “single biggest form of institutionalized racism in America today.”
Ramaswamy also supports abortion bans and is one of those morons who weaponizes “woke.” Perhaps worse than all of that is that he lives in Ohio, the worst state in the nation. Hard swipe left.
Ron DeSantis: For my bread, the most dangerous candidate on deck. Darth DeSantis’ recent run of bending the Florida legislature to his will to sign into law some of the scariest bills we’ve seen this century is at once impressive and a frightening portent of what his presidency could look like.
DeSantis is very much an ideological bandwagoner, hopping from cause to cause like carnival rides. But his recent causes as Florida’s governor have been utterly noxious and earned him support on a national level from citizens whose neighborhoods I’d like to avoid after dusk (that kind of support makes him Trump’s most potent challenger).
He’s essentially Trump with more savviness and brains; if I voted in a location where it mattered, I’d consider voting GOP for the first time ever just to make sure DeSantis’ scary ass gets nowhere near turning the country into “The Man in the High Castle.”
Donald Trump: It’s almost awe-inspiring that four years of Trump wasn’t enough for even the most ridiculous right-wingers. Almost.
Trump has been the front-runner for the GOP nomination for a while now ― indictment be damned, insurrection responsibility be damned, propagation of a false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from him be damned, inability to speak above a sixth-grade level be damned. Trump is draped in political Teflon that I’d invest in if presented with an IPO.
So many of us thought that Trump would never get elected the first time, but dude has a natural toxic touch about which I’m looking forward to Malcolm Gladwell writing a book. Prison might be the only thing to keep his ass out of the White House.
I doubt he sees a cell. But my fingers are crossed just the same.
