That's him, officer, that's the cad  who wants to be president A handy index of the would-be's, wannabe's, and total idiots who want the job of salvaging everything Bush hasn't completely wrecked

JULY 2007: Most registered Dems are happy with their choices for prez. Only 1/4 of Republicans say the same. 

Less than two years hence, Americans must hold their noses and pick the next moron in succession. Actually, Pee-Wee Herman and Carrot-Top look better than Bush Jr., so you only have to be good enough to win. But you need to be a whole lot BETTER than good enough to fix the mess that GW and his band of Congressional cronies have created. Here are the potential next presidents, and the correct opinion on their respective chances and capabilities.  The correct rating of their chances are NOT influenced by whether or not I like them.

In the GOP field, there are late-comers claiming to be the "true" conservatives running, since the front-runners are all "suspect." This is why you get retreads like Gingrich and the two Thompsons. A frightening thing in the first GOP debate: three of them said they don't believe in evolution. Jesus Christ!

          Clinton | Obama

Kinda-sorta Romney | Hilary | Huckabee

Improbable  Hunter | Obama | Gingrich | Fred Thompson | Ron Paul

Toast    George Allen | Frist | Kerry | Kucinich | Bayh | Vilsack  |  Tommy T. | Brownback

Ridiculous  Condi Rice    Tancredo (sorry, won't waste my time on him)

Absolutely still a great candidate. This guy has been involved in a host of great causes, has tons of energy, and is smarter than hell. He easily cruised over Bush in their debates. Too bad a whoooooooole bunch of retards were content to say after each debate, "Well, Bush didn't swallow his own tongue, so I guess he did pretty good."  Seriously, in the press, Gore was graded on how he did, while Bush was graded on how bad he didn't do.

A lot of folks, including ME, would definitely vote for him again. But even after the Nobel Peace Prize, which his critics actaully use against him for insane reasons, he doesn't want to get back into the race. Can't blame him.

There's a ton of upside to this guy. Excellent in debates with Cheney in 2004. Even got the evil old SOB to finally admit publicly that there was no evidence linking 9/11 and Iraq (although two days later the evil old SOB repeated that lie anyway in a stump speech). 

He's articulate, personally successful, and decisive (the antithesis of Bush Jr.), and always appear to do the right thing, not just the popular thing. He has persevered after personal tragedy (the loss of a child), and can easily describe what he wants to accomplish. Fiscally responsible. Sharp-brained. These also make him the non-Bush.

He's unfortunately felt compelled to go after Hillary Clinton rather hard, which is too bad. He obviously won't settle for a VP slot again, so it's not like the attacks will ace him out of that role.

John McCain

You wanna talk flip-flop? Damn, I used to like this guy. But his insane desire to be president, and his likely aggravation over losing in the 2000 primaries to a complete dummy, have caused him to grow lips like Mick Jagger's. On the subject of energy policy, McCain has flip-flopped all over the place as to whether or not he likes ethanol. He has stated definitively that it doesn't help air quality or fuel efficiency, then turend right around and says that it DOES. Seems to depend on the audience. A few years back, he said he did not support overturning Roe V. Wade. Now he says he's been consistently pro-life. Well, which IS it?

Once a favorite of my wife's, McCain has kissed the religious right's ass so bad, he's lost all credibility in the middle. It's only a sleazy ploy, since in the past he's ragged about the undue influence of evangelicals. In 2000, he called Jerry Falwell "evil," and the religious right in general e pronounced "agents of intolerance." But in 2006, he gave the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University. 

McCain used to be a deficit hawk, and now he supports the Bush tax cuts, despite the multi-trillion-dollar debt they've helped create.

As if completely clueless, McCain skipped the conservative CPAC gathering in March 2007, and the right-wing nutjobs there crucified him for it. Forget it, they're not going to back him. He's screwed, except slightly center of right.

McCain's completely ass-backwards this time around. He ripped on Bush when the president's ratings were up. Now that Bush is righteously in the polling dumper, McCain suddenly supports him AND  the disastrous Iraq occupation. What the hell!

February 2007, McCain went on David Letterman and said, "Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be. We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives." He said it, and he meant it. The next day, he backed up, saying he meant to say "sacrificed" instead of "wasted." But if you plug one word in for the other in his statement, it makes no sense. He meant to say "wasted." And he was right. But he didn't have the political BALLS to stick with it.
 

April 2007: John McCain went to Baghdad, to show how safe it was. He'd gotten stuck trying to defend his idiotic claim that Iraq was getting safer by the minute, largely due to the "surge." Instead, he showed how f____g dangerous it is, because he was taking his P.R. walk in a flak jacket, surrounded by guys with guns, armored vehicles, and Apache attack copters overhead. Overall, it cost tens of thousands of dollars to pay for the more than one hundred personnel assigned to secure his "safe" walk in a Baghdad market, and they had to clear the market in advance, killing business for the day. He supports the surge, but also says the war has been "horribly mismanaged." So he trusts the same dummies who've mismanaged the war to manage the surge? Now that he's way behind on fund-raising, he's had to cut campaign staff, and he keeps going after war critics despite his utter loss of credibility on the subject.

"Let's pick up a mocha grande  and some grenades."

Like Romney, McCain says he opposes gay marriage, but says it's up to the states to decide. In other words, he's completely wimped out on the subject.

Likely to be a strong leader. NORMALLY he's a social moderate (not counting the last year or so). He has said that he opposes abortion, but wouldn't work to overturn Roe v. Wade because it would subject American women to "illegal and dangerous operations."  And yet more recently he supported South Dakota's draconian (and ill-fated) abortion ban.

McCain has also learned to love Bush's tax breaks, and other economically stupid things that he used to call "fiscally irresponsible." In fact, there's a whole host of items that McCain used to shit on that he now backs up, as he tries to get in good with the party again.

I definitely like the old independent McCain over the new suck-up model.

McCain is definitely electable. But like Hilary, he's gone further right to court voters and public opinion, and this has turned out to be a grave miscalculation. But again, still strongly in the mix. His party, however, might look at him as a rehash.

GOP debate update: Too preachy, too rehearsed, too many macho moments ("I'll follow Bin Laden to the gates of hell"), and he actually got outshined easily by even the guys in the back of the pack. This event didn't help him one bit.

July 2007: McCain had already slashed his campaign operations, due to his lackluster fund-raising. Then his top two campaign chiefs quit. He's screwed. Supporting Bush's least popular positions is, as they say in Iowa, really f___g dumb. 

Rudy Giuliani

November update: Noted religious dickhead Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy Giuliani, despite Robertson's pro-life agenda and Rudy's support for abortion rights. The really, really wacky thing about this pairing is the fact that Rudy sells himself as the 9/11 guy, tough on terrorists and big on security, while Robertson, shortly after 9/11, agreed with Jerry Falwell that 9/11 was something America "deserved" because of the ACLU, homosexuality, feminists, and abortion rights. How the hell can Rudy accept this endorsement?

The former mayor of New York was roundly despised in his own city for much of his reign. He cut down crime, but at the price of countless incidents where police trampled civil rights. Like GW Bush (and Donald Rumsfeld), he managed to massively boost lousy ratings because of 9/11, where he somehow looked to clueless morons like a true leader by simply walking around the wreckage, barking at people. It was a "take charge" moment in which he really didn't do that much, but this kind of thing easily impresses mouth-breathers. His embarrassing divorce, during which he moved his mistress into his pad while the wife and kids were still around, shows his true character. It also won't help when they start circulating the MANY pictures of Giuliani dressed in drag. He did it on numerous occasions. Sure, for fun, no problem, but we're talking SEVERAL times. It's kinda weird. Once or twice, it's funny. A bunch of times, you're f____d in the head.

It's also hard to be the candidate for the self-proclaimed values party when you AND your wife have both been married three times (she tried to hide one of them), you didn't attend your son's high school graduation, your kids don't really like you, you moved your mistress into the mayor's mansion before moving your wife out, you lived with a gay couple after things went south with the second wife, and you're a grumpy prick. This self-proclaimed conservative and his wife have six marriages between them. Who does Rudy truly inspire, and to what? He inspires the religious right to discuss third party candidates. They don't buy into his sudden conversion to their angle. And they shouldn't. 

There's a good chance that the GOP primaries will come down to Giuliani and Romney. Both have powerful backers, but Giuliani has far more baggage.

DITCH THE CUTE SHIT: At two different 2007 events, Rudy's cell phone went off. At the first one, he told the crowd, "Hey, it's my wife," and he talked to her, and the idiot crowd ate up the pathetically staged stunt. When he repeated it at a speech at the NRA, it didn't go over too well. Too cute, too redundant, and they weren't really warming up to him in the first place.

Giuliani echoes the worst of the Bush administration policies regarding Iraq and terrorism. "We've got to fight them there so they don't follow us here." Holy shit, that's long proven to be wrong. Rudy arrogantly enough proclaimed that of all the candidates, "I have the most foreign policy experience." This he based on being mayor of NYC, home of the United Nations. Oh, so he shook a few hands. But what about Hillary, who visited more than 80 countries as First Lady and who's been to Iraq? What about former UN ambasador Bill Richardson, who has negotiated hostage releases in foreign lands? What about Biden, who's spent over three decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? This comment was on the same wavelength as when he claimed he'd been at Ground Zero more than any of the workers.

N.B. The NYC crime rate was already on the way down before his much-touted crackdown, and after his police commissioner left, it kept going down. Timing is everything. But one of the reasons he wanted his police chief gone was because that guy was getting too much of the credit, rather than Rudy.

He highly recommended his former police chief Bernard Kerik (which he now says was a mistake) to run Homeland Security (to replace Bush's completely untalented Tom Ridge, aka Mister Duct Tape), and then it was found out that Kerik not only had ties to the mob, but an illegal as a nanny. Giuliani has little to recommend him for the job other than a high profile, most of which is negative. October 2007, Kerik's in even more hot water, and Rudy's distancing himself quickly, after recommending this guy to run security for the whole f____g country.

This is what I said in 2006: "Giuliani supporters try to gloss over the zig-zag of their boy's positions on right-wing issues. Rudy will likely have to modify his stances on gun control, gay rights, and abortion (although the far right will love his crime control record). The GOP also is unhappy with Giuliani defending Bill Clinton over the ridiculous charges that as president, Clinton didn't do enough to fight terrorists."   And so what happened? Rudy indeed flip-flopped on a number of issues to suck up to conservatives. He modified his gun stance. He claims that 9/11 changed his thinking, and yet in 202 and 2004 he still made statements in favor of gun control. Previously, he'd sued gun manufacturers, and called the NRA "extremists." Now he kisses their ass. He said that he no longer agreed with the changes that had occurred in the lawsuit he originally launched against gun makers, but in fact NOTHING had changed about it, and he certainly won't elaborate. It's a shame that he's lost his balls, or dumped his principles, for naked ambition.
 

With party conservatives, he'll have trouble. He supports abortion rights, stem cell research, and civil unions. He even moved in with a gay couple after he wrecked his second marriage. He has marched in gay pride parades, dressed in drag for a joke at a formal dinner, and appeared on SNL, dressing as an old lady. In a lot of ways, he looks a lot more like a Democrat than a Republican. One big downer: support for the Iraq war, even after a lot of right-wingers have run away from it.

April 2007: Giuliani pulled out that old chestnut that Democrats don't understand the "war on terror" and will make the USA less safe. Ah, but what about the fact that the GOP, after years in power following 9/11, haven't done a single goddamn thing to secure the ports and the borders? What about the GOP president who turned Iraq into a hotbed of terrorism, which it wasn't BEFORE the ill-advised invasion? What about the GOP president who has turned every other country, including our allies, against us?

March 2007: The firefighters union in NYC has come down squarely against Giuliani, claiming that he spent more time post 9/11 worrying about the recovery of gold and silver from Ground Zero than he did about recovery of human remains. They actually have all sorts of documented allegations in regard to this. They really, really don't like him. Not a good constituency to have against you, NYC firefighters. 

There are other 9/11 issues. Rudy is blamed for locating the city's emergency response center in 7 World Trade Center, which contain ed thousands of gallons of diesel fuel after it collapsed on 9/11. One of the towers had been attacked in 1993 as well. Others had insisted on moving the center to Brooklyn, which in fact is where it's at now. Rudy is also blamed for the first responders not having adequate radios. SUMMER 2007, Rudy claimed he'd spent more time at Ground Zero than many of the workers. This was total bullshit. In fact, one news source was able to verify that he'd spent more time at Yankees games than at Ground Zero. September 2007, somebody decided to HELP Rudy further exploit 9/11 by having a fund-raiser with the goal of raising $9.11 per head. SHAMELESS.

First GOP debate: Too many weak answers. Too much weirdness on the campaign trail lately. Too wishy washy on too many answers in general. If people still support him, then they're not listening to any of his statements. On abortion, you literally can't tell where he stands, because he's afraid of pissing off one constiuency or another. He gave the wimpiest non-answer possible. Grow a set of balls, stop wearing dresses, and simply answer the freaking question.

Subseqent debates: Too many attacks. On defense or offense, he's prickly. No subtlety, no tact.

Bill Richardson

The governor of New Mexico has been in front of a whole bunch of issues. His resume is great. In addition to running a statehouse, he's been a Congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, diplomat, and Secretary of Energy. He's often the Democratic spokesman for whatever issue pops up, he knows foreign relations, and he's well-spoken.  Hell, compared to W, my damned dachsund is well-spoken.

One screwy hiccup: he was telling people for years that he was drafted by a pro ball team. Not true. He says he thought it was at the time. Oh well.

Remember I said this. Joe Biden. This is the guy. Perfect? Hell no. Smarter than Bush? Well, a box of Kleenex is smarter than Bush, but the answer is resoundingly yes. Experienced, and able to handle a slew of tough questions without a teleprompter? You betcha. Joe Biden. Remember that.

Biden has the best foreign policy experience of any of them. It's kinda funny when he rips on the GOP candidates for their silly remarks, especially Rudy's, on foreign relations. This guy deserves a high level slot in any cabinet, given his knowledge of what's abroad.

It's too bad she couldn't maintain her Democratic principles with regard to the war. She needed to come out like John Edwards and admit she screwed up in authorizing the war. She's a Democrat who's too often sided with the GOP. But she's the anti-Bush, which is a good thing. She'll be the front runner to the end, assuming she doesn't screw up and hand it to Obama, who gained quickly before dropping off.

A lot of people, including even her critics, are already coronating her. There are plenty in the GOP who fully expect her to become president, simply because there is absolutely no consensus on their own candidates. 

Barack Obama is young, handsome, popular, articulate, and like John Edwards is a very positive person. Even on the occasion he had to hold his nose and back up a party candidate, the highly unqualified Todd Stroger for Cook County (IL) Commissioner, he said he wished the process had gone differently (not quite as forceful a rebuke as when Republican Judy Baar-Topinka blasted the IL state GOP for importing Alan Keyes for Senate). 

I have no doubt that Obama could one day run for president. I like the guy. He's from my state. Good family man. Got all the right ideas. He put out a statement in October 2002 saying that an invasion of Iraq was not warranted, that Saddam was no threat, that a war would have terrible consequences and costs, would last for years, i.e. he predicted EVERYTHING correctly. 

But it's TOO SOON. He'll get skewered for no good reason. I think the country is close to being able to elect a black man. But not this one. And not yet. He should hold his mojo a while, stop teasing people, and sit this one out. He's got a lot of years yet. Too soon. He hasn't even finished half his first Congressional term, and he's hinting about the big office. C'mon, put the time in, get the experience. This has nothing to do with race; it's all about the resume.

October 2007: The right is all a-dither, because Obama doesn't wear a flag pin on his lapel any longer. He says he'd rather show his patriotism with deeds rather than a freaking [iece of jewelry. And he's RIGHT. I don't know how many times I've been passed on the highway by dildoes doiong ninety in their SUVs that happen to have "support the troops" decals on their bumpers. They're shitty citizens, and having a damn bumper sticker doesn't change that fact. I don't wear a flag pin, or have a ribbon decal on my car, but I volunteer several hours every Sunday for charity, I watch out for my neighbors and their kids, I volunteer in my community. If somebody gave me a hard time for something as stupid as not wearing a pin, I'd tell them to f__k themselves.

Obama is starting to piss off followers. He's continuing to fall in national polls, while leading in some state polls. His contributors are also asking why he's spending all his time and money in Iowa, while he does in fact have the resources to also hit other states. He's almost betting the farm on Iowa, which can be a big mistake, as historically proven.

Mitt Romney

Debate update, November 2007: This clueless f__k was asked if he believed every word of the Bible, and he dodged and weaved, and dissembled, and ultimately weaseled out of the question. Then John McCain kicked his ass on the question of torture. And then he ducked on the question of gays in the military, and completely whiffed on the question of deficit spending. The only time he showed the tiniest bit of spine had to do with the Confederate flag. This guy has NO BALLS. He has NO BALLS AT ALL.

Quickie update August 2007:  Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who'd been a big supporter of Mitt's, got busted in a Minneapolis airport bathroom for soliciting anonymous gay sex. Romney quickly dumped his ass in a cold-as-fish televised statement, saying nothing good at all about Craig, his long tenure in Congress, or his poor family. Romney has all the tact of Howard Stern. No class, no loyalty, just a pile of shit.

The ex-gov of Massachusetts, Romney seems to have found his message in running for president in '08: banning same-sex marriage. Since he doesn't seem to stand for much else, it's hard to see why he thinks he'll get far at all. The 2006 midterms showed that this isn't an issue strong enough to get him anywhere. It's especially stupid considering he was governor of the one state where gay marriage is legal. Every time a poll is taken on the subject, respondents get increasingly tolerant of gays.

Is there ANYTHING Mitt Romney hasn't changed his mind on? He's changed his position on immigration. In 2006, he called a bipartisan guest worker program "reasonable proposals," and in spring 2007 he calls it "amnesty." He's flipped on abortion, guns, gay rights, taxes, healthcare, you NAME it. It's hilarious to hear John McCain telling everybody how Romeny's flipped on immigration so bad, he needs to "get out his varmint-huntin' gun and chase those Guatemalans off his lawn."

The folks who will nail his ass on this the hardest are in fact the conservatives he's now courting. Dec 06, conservatives started circulating a 1994 letter from Romney, then a Senate candidate, in which he pledged to fight for gay rights harder than his opponent, Ted Kennedy. His supporters distributed fliers during a Boston gay pride parade, wishing participants well. 

And now? He says he's been "a champion of traditional marriage."  Oh yeah, like his own, where he followed the traditional Mormon model of not allowing non-Mormon members of the bride's family to attend.

Romney said that as governor of Massachusetts he would "protect the right of a woman to choose." These days he calls himself "pro-life," yet in cowardly fashion says he favors letting individual states decide. That's the weasel option: I'm against it, but I'll let somebody else deal with it. Summer 2007, he finally let slip that he'd favor a Constitutional amendment banning abortion. This clown changes like the weather.

Romney keeps making fun of the liberal values in Massachusetts, but what the hell, he ran the place a good long time, campaigned on those very values, so what is this two-faced shithead thinking that he's now a conservative?

ROMNEY WON THE IOWA STRAW POLL. How did he do this? He bought it. He bussed in more people than any of the other candidates. Free food, drinks, music, and buses. Huckabee spent a FRACTION there, and handily won second.

ROMNEY IS PRO-WAR. But when asked if any of his five sons was going to enlist, he replied that the way they were showing their patriotism was working to get him elected. HOLY SHIT, he actually said that.

He also strongly supported embryonic stem cell research, which is only a positive these days. But then get this: with just a few days left as Mass gov, he decided to sign an agreement giving state troopers the ability to detain illegal aliens they run into in the course of normal duties. In other words, he's pandering to the far right, like so many in the GOP have done the last decade. Embarrassingly enough, it was found that the landscaper who's been doing the gov's mansion there employs illegals. Oops. Besides, the new incoming Democratic governor will promptly undo this new policy, because of the burden it will put on already-overworked troopers.

Romney would be the first Mormon in the White House, if a whole lotta people got retarded enough to vote for him. Does this foreshadow the existence of multiple first ladies? Intriguing. But Romney's candidacy is likely DOA.

To appeal to the gun nuts, Romney, who previously said he "wasn't on the same page" as the NRA, joined them as a member for life. Suck-up alert. THEN he claimed he'd been a hunter all his life, meaning he went hunting TWICE. He went so far as to say he used to hunt "varmints."   Jesus Christ, what a dork.

Romney says the GOP "must return to the common sense Reagan Republican ideals of fighting for hardworking Americans." Huh? Does he mean the union-busting, anti-environment, let corporations raid their pension funds Reagan? THAT Reagan, who arranged for millions of Americans to lose their pensions? THAT Reagan?

This guy has flipped and flopped more often than the Italians in world wars. When the base you're kissing up to thinks you're full of shit, then you're screwed.

GOP debate update: He got called on changing his views on just about everything for political convenience. He's smooth about it, but it's still a giant flip-flop. Possibly the most obvious flop was on universal health care. He pushed a healthcare bill in Massachusetts as gov, which conservative critics have said looked like something Hillary Clinton would have devised. Then he ran away from it, and barely notes it on his web site. SO when asked about it during the first debate, he said "I love it." Make up your goddamn mind! 

So this idiot has flipped on guns, abortion, gay marriage, and stem cells. Anything else you forgot there, Sybil?

Hilary Clinton

Smart, experienced, has seen it all done before, up close and very well. BUT ..... she got suddenly hawkish when it looked like that was the poll-driven thing to do. Same problem I have with McCain. And ..... face it, she's probably not electable. So why offer her up? The Democrats need to look elsewhere.

She's smart, the GOP were complete assholes when they crucified her over a very earnest effort over universal healthcare (what have THEY come up with after all these years in the majority? Nothing.), and she knows the ins and outs better than Bush ever did. But her unfavorable ratings are too big. She could probably do a very good job, but she'll never get the chance. Hopefully she doesn't allow ego and ambition to keep her from doing the right thing, which is support an electable Dem candidate.

Tommy Thompson

August 2007, Tommy finally admitted what the rest of us already knew. He didn't stand a f*cking chance of being president. You can't run forever on welfare reform, his biggest claim to fame.

What most people nationally might remember about this guy was his leadership in welfare reform when he was Wisconsin governor. It used to be that plenty of folks went up to Cheeseland, established residency, then took advantage of their very liberal welfare policies. Tommy changed all that. It helped usher in national welfare reform under Clinton.

As Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy ran away from reform. The FDA was a scandal-prone mess when Tommy was in charge. He helped push them to approve the VeriChip, an electronic tag that can be literally injected into humans for identification. He wanted it as a medical ID thingy. He also owns stock in the VeriChip Corporation at the time, and sits on their board of directors.

This sounds like a Dick Cheney / Halliburton style conflict of interest.

Tommy promised on national TV that he was going to get a chip stuck up his own ass, to promote the whole idea, then never did. If he does it, he'll look like a complete idiot. If he doesn't, he'll look like the two-faced stooge that he is. Either way, he comes off pretty stupid.

Tommy has not spent enough time in the public eye, however, to create big unfavorable ratings. People outside his own state don't know him enough to like OR dislike him. He's conservative enough to appeal to the right and a good chunk of the middle. But really, he's just another cranky old man with too mcuh baggage. So while he could stay in the mix for a while, ultimately he's screwed.

May 2007: Tommy told a Jewish group that making money was a Jewish tradition. Holy crap!

April 2007: Having had insufficient balls to join before now, Tommy finally and formally announced his candidacy. Took him long enough. Instead of going into battle, he waited to see just how weak the field was before committing. No spine. Not the guy to follow.

GOP debate update: Tommy said it was okay for a business to fire somebody because that person is gay. Holy shit. This guy's an imbecile. Not that it matters, since he's DOA in this race. He later claimed that his hearing aid was on the fritz, and even later than that, he blamed his answer on the fact that he had to go to the bathroom. He ALSO also also also blamed flu and bronchitis. What, no flat tire or locusts?

Mike Huckabee

This guy has primarily been known to the world outside Arkansas (where he's been governor since 1996) as the guy who dropped a lot of weight. He was fat, got on a kick, got slimmer, and ran a marathon. He's been generous, perhaps overly, took good care of Katrina refugees coming to his state, is big on healthcare and natural resources, and has done a lot of good things. Articulate, not necessarily all GOP'd out over Iraq, speaks his own mind. 

But he's been a spending nut, and gets failing grades on the economics of his state. Lots of tax hikes, lots of spending increases.  He's a frigging creationist. Let's say it again, if you think the world was created the way the Bible says so, you're a MORON. Okay, got that out of my system. Again.

So he's a Bible-thumper, but a tax-hiker. That's messed up, for a Republican. I really wanna like this guy, but the spending and the creationist stuff is wacky. We've already had years of policies warped by the religious right, we don't need any more. Still, of all the GOP possibilities, he seems like the most likable. It's too bad he'll never make it. He can't even rate past Fred and Mitt, who are completely full of shit.

Duncan Hunter

This clueless 13-term Congressman from California announced his candidacy, prompting a raising of eyebrows among even his fellow Republicans. He sorta kinda maybe has some of the creds to run, but his profile is negligible. And with Congress now in the hands of the Dems, his party will not eagerly throw money his way, given his anonymity.

He also bizarrely enough announced he was running, just eight days before midterm elections. Who cared?  Too much else going on.

August 2007, he won the Texas straw poll the same way Romney won the Iowa poll. He BOUGHT it. He bussed in more people than anybody else. Tis is largely because everybody utterly ignored Texas, as wel they should, since it's the mouth-breathers down there who gave us Bush.

To his credit, he was the main proponent in building a fence along his county's boarder with Mexico, he's a decorated Viet Nam vet, and he's been chairman of the Armed Services Committee (until the midterms, that is). But one political science expert observed that Hunter presumed he would lose his chairmanship to the Dems, and didn't wanna be just another face in the GOP minority crowd, so now he wants a bigger profile. But president? Nah.

This sleazy fat bonehead, who helped engineer and then squander the Republican "revolution" of 1994, largely by continuing the pork and shutting down the federal government just to make a point, says he's hanging around to see if a true conservative shows up to lead the pack. If not, he'll jump in. But there's the problem. He won't jump in officially, just yet. What's he waiting for? To see what additional damage McCain will do to himself. To see how much more conservatives reject Giuliani. In other words, Newt doesn't have the balls to join the fight, until some of the other guys are a little worn down. No balls at all, in fact.

But then in March 2007, the fat pig revealed that he was HAVING AN AFFAIR WHILE PUSHING THE CLINTON IMPEACHMENT OVER THE MONICA LEWINSKY MESS. In other words, let's shit on the president for screwing around, while I myself am screwing around. Lying, hypocritical, partisan asshole. And why did he reveal this? Because it might come out when he finally does announce he's running.

This guy's had three wives? And he cheated on the first two? I'm a complete moderate, identifying more with Democrats, and I've had ONE. I'm going to let a guy like Newt lead the way on conservative values?

The last day of March 2007, and this frigging idiot says that bilingualism is the same as "ghetto talk."  I'm all for English being the official language, and not having to print things in different languages, but HELL, he's running for PRESIDENT. You can't say shit like that. And the use of the word "ghetto" is pretty damn stupid. He's damaged himself with this one. And once again it helps paint conservatives as racist boobs with no tolerance whatsoever.

April 2007: After the dust settled at VA Tech, dumbf__k Newt said that giving beer-addled, hormone-driven college students the right to carry concealed weapons would have made the damage worse. Like all gun nuts, Newt says that the answer to gun violence is more guns. Or, in truth, Newt is simply PANDERING.

This fat windbag is better known for playing heavies in movies and TV than for his lawmaker days. He's big, nasty, and ugly, and Richard Nixon once called him "dumb as hell."  His political views are exactly what you'd think they'd be, if you've ever seen him in even one part. Often he's a bad guy, or the worst of the good guys, in any show.

During Watergate, when he was supposed to be playing a bipartisan role, he would instead secretly feed the White House the evidence against them. Even as he helped Nixon, the president referred to Fred as "dumb as hell." Then when it was over, Fred took credit for helping uncover the taping system. So he kissed the boss's ass, then took credit for taking him down. SLEAZEBAG.

Fred left the Senate after a couple of lackluster terms, then went into the lobbying business, even doing work for groups (eg. abortion rights) that conservatives hate. Then he says he wants to return to Washington to help "change" the place. Uh-huh.

He shows as little patience and energy campaigning as he did during his lackluster  time in the Senate, during which he was faulted for not putting in the hard work of legislating, preferring to chase women and hang out on the town. At campaign events, he doesn't shake a lot of hands, and he doesn't ask a lot of questions.

Oct '07 Iowa update: Freddie gave a speech in Iowa Falls. When his long, boring ramble was over, he thanked the audience for their time. he should have thanked them for not falling asleep. he then had to inform them that he was done, and he literally asked for applause. He's about the most unenthusiastic candidate EVER. While in town, he referred to the "Soviet Union." He also said he couldn't recall the details of the Terri Schiavo case, and was surprised to heard that there were disputed oil reserves in the Everglades. Whoa, better catch up on those newspapers, Fred. he talked about walking John Roberts through the nomination process for Supreme Court, noting quite INCORRECTLY that the Democrats had controlled the judiciary committee.

In kissing the asses of gun nuts, Fred said he couldn't wait to get out of New York, because it wasn't gun-friendly. So just like that big pussy Charlton Heston, Fred apparently doesn't have the balls to stand up for himself, and needs a gun. Of course, we already know that Fred has no balls, because although he keeps taking potshots at other candidates, he waited forver to officially get in the race. And while other candidates are debating, he's cruising on Jay Leno.

That said, he's ANOTHER guy who's going to portray himself as the "true conservative" in the GOP bunch, since the front-runners have all hurt their right-wing credentials one way or another. But TRUE conservative? Fred did legal work for an abortion rights group. He was hired to lobby the first President Bush for a family-planning group that wanted relaxation of a rule restricting federal money to clinics that provided abortion counseling. Fred denies that he did this, but multiple sources corroborate that Fred in fact did the work over several months, even meeting with White House Chief of Staff John Sununu about it. So much for campaigning as a 'pro-lifer."

Fred was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry (ouch), the savings and loan industry (double-ouch: he pushed for the deregulation that ultimately killed that industry; remember Keating?), and former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (triple freaking ouch: Aristide was a brutal, awful frigging dictator who spoke of his love for “necklacing,” in which victims had burning tires tired around their necks). 

This guy's been in entertainment too long, and out of the Senate too long. If he gets to the top, it will be just like Bush Jr. Is this the best the GOP can come up with?

April 2007: Fred has announced he has lymphoma. Let's recall that IMMEDIATELY after stealing the 2000 election, Cheney had a heart attack. Why go through this again?

Fred Thompson was a lousy senator. He didn't put in a lot of hours, got easily bored, didn't even like campaigning for it that much. His own colleagues even say he put in minimal effort, and his legislative record is pretty thin. So WHY would he be a good president?

I like this guy. He sounds more like a libertarian than a Republican. He's had ten terms in the House. He's a doctor, but that doesn't automatically give him a pass. Plenty of doctors, including Bill "Terri Schiavo looks fine to ME" Frist, have prostituted their skills for political expediency. He opposes amnesty for illegals, opposes the war and the Patriot Act, although he also opposes gun control, which makes him a tiny bit of a stinker. 

Unlike Bush, Paul actually knows what it means to be a strict Constitutional constructionist (Bush uses that term all the time, difficult as it is for him to pronounce it, but he as beaten the hell out of the Consitution as often as he could). Paul also hates deficit spending.

This guy is the leading GOP member on the internet. In other words, his supporters are more savvy, more in tune with American society and where it's going. He appeals to yonger Republicans. He actually ran for prez as a Libertarian in 1988. He initially supported Reagan, but criticized Reagan's runaway deficit spending. He's very active, and sponsors lots of bills. He has repeatedly campaigned for strict Constitutional control over spurious executive actions (eg. declaring war without Congressional approval). 

This guy, who's shorter than my kid, actually has great intentions. He's got one HUGE thing going for him: he's probably the only candidate out there who was steadfastly against the war, with no ambiguity, from the very beginning. No foot-dragging. No "if only I'd known the facts." Forget it. Against the war, the end.

But he's the original gay-rights, tree-hugging, minimum wage loving, anti-death penatlyl, marijuana-legalizing kinda guy. He'll always be looked at as soft.

On the other hand, he's for reasonable gun control, hates electronic voting machines, wants campaign reform in a serious way, cares about the environment for REAL, and desires true economic benefits for all, not just the rich few.

He doesn't stand a chance. But sometimes it's just nice to know there are people like this out there still loooking out for the little guy.

Successful Democrat in a GOP-leaning state. Has over $10 million bucks to start. Experienced in Intelligence and Armed Services. Initially supported the Iraq war, but changed his mind, saying that if he'd known how badly the Bushies had cooked the data to make their case, he would have voted no. As Indiana gov, he never raised taxes, kept a good state ecocnomy going, created a record budget surplus, and kept unemployment low. In the Senate, he has a good record, although I'm not keen on his support of citizenship for illegals.

Has a good record. Not controversial. Maybe too bland. But looks sharp. He'll be in it for a while, and drop out midway through the primaries.

December 2006: That quick, he's decided not to run. That was fast. Said the odds were too long. And he's probably right.

This guy is screwed with a capital S.  After his bozo-like racial gaffe (calling a black guy following him around with a video camera "Macaca," which is a type of monkey), and his subsequent inability to deal with the fallout, he looks like he could f___k up a cup of coffee. "Macaca" will be identified with him a long time, like Roberto Duran and "no mas."

If you can't hang onto your own Senate seat after a single term, it don't look good. He was mentioned for quite a while as presidential material, but a blindly conservative bent, a single term, a huge foot-in-mouth moment, and little to show in the Congressional record, makes Allen dead meat.

Bill Frist

November 2006 update: Frist has dropped out of the race, saying that he wants to take a break from public life. But the real story is his negative numbers. His completely idiotic stand on the Terri Schiavo case, and his nonsensical, unscientific ramblings that contradict with his medical degree (but which somehow agree with his rightwing leanings), make him look like a partisan zombie.

Check out the correct opinion on his strange views here.

In fact, Frist has been the most unattractive possible presidential candidate for years. It's been apparent to even his GOP peers that he's pushed an ultra-conservative agenda more to appeal to the perceived base than to help legislate. In other words, he's been a Moral Majority whore in pursuit of higher office.

John Kerry

This guy probably has the smarts to be president. Compared to Bush, my frigging dachsund has the smarts. But Kerry sucks at handling himself. When the lying sacks of shit known hilariously as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth completely made up shit about Kerry, a wounded Viet Nam veteran, Kerry was limp in responding to these scumbags. When he tripped over a bad joke about Bush just before the 2006 midterms, he again didn't respond when Bush and the whole right wing scum patrol twisted his words into an attack on the troops.

This is a very smart guy. Forceful, direct. But he makes too many P.R. flubs. His negative ratings are as big as his favorables. At this point, even Dems probably think, "not again." Kerry's window of opportunity has come and gone.

January 2007 update: Kerry smartly dropped out. No point in it. Too crowded a field. The novelty's worn off, and he can't avoid saying stupid shit. His party will be better off. Kerry really is a hard-working, highly intelligent public servant, but the president thing has come and gone.

Tom Vilsack

The former governor of Iowa, following a Democratic avalanche in that state in the 2006 midterms, got into the race early, to let everybody know just who the hell he is. You can't laugh him off, considering most Americans who didn't watch the Dem convention in 1988 had no clue who Clinton was.

It was hard to gauge his national popularity (he registers at less than one percent in national polls), because he's a NOBODY to the rest of the country. Worse yet, among Iowans he only ranks fourth among Democratic prez hopefuls. He was a finalist to be Kerry's running mate in 2004. He needed to start raising money, raising his profile, and convincing the people of his state that he was worthy, so it spills over.

Of course, plenty of Texans thought that Bush had been a shitty governor, and he still managed, so perhaps there's hope for Vilsack yet. And not a lot of people knew Clinton early on, the governor of a very small state. And remember, Iowa comes early in the primaries. But none of this matters any longer, since Vilsack, understanding the economics of running for president, dropped in February 2007. He was gonna be roadkill anyway, but he was sincere roadkill. Not a bad guy, just not a great candidate. 

The Republican Senator from Kansas, a staunch conservative, never had a chance. He couldn'r raise money, couldn't raise his profile beyond his home state, and always looked likely to run for Kansas gov when all this crashed and burned anyway. He spent a lot of what little money he'd raised on the Iowa straw poll, and saw little return for his investment. Huckabee, on the other hand, spent very little, and came in second to Romney, who bought the f___g thing. Brownback pulled out in October 2007, with little cash and support from only 1% of Republicans. 

He's throwing his support to McCain. Given that Brownie's a social conservative, that can only help McCain, who's not trusted ever since he assailed (rightfully) the religious right a few years back.

There are still web pages out there, maintained by retards, calling for Condi to run for the White House, despite her disastrous years with a disastrous president. 

Condi was called "weak" by George Herbert Walker Bush, because she couldn't put the brakes on Rumsfeld, another person that Bush Sr. doesn't like. Her imaginary candidacy is so bizarro, she gets her own page.

Summary: Condi is attached at the hip to Bush's utterly failed policies. 9/11 happened on her watch as national security adviser. The USA's relations with the rest of the world went into the shitter during her watch as Secretary of State. She ain't bad-looking, she never liked Rumsfeld, she's articulate, all positives. After that, she's worthless as a presidential candidate.