Primary Season is Upon Us!

What season is it?  Why, it's primary season!

   Today (Feb 9) is the New Hampshire primary, and the election gets into full swing.  I'm both excited by it and repulsed.   

     I'm repulsed by the normally sensible center of American politics which has learned to embrace huge deficits, perpetual war in the Middle East, out of control immigration and several other huge problems as the norm.   

    Not surprisingly, then, we have serious challenges being mounted by relative outsiders to the political process such as Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson.  The Republican inside man, Jeb Bush has already been thoroughly routed whereas the erstwhile Democrat juggernaut, Hillary Clinton, has been hit hard by a 74 year old socialist named Bernie Sanders. 

    At this point, nine months before the election there is plenty of time to pick which party to support.  I think it is good to look at both sides, just like when you go to buy a new car you're better off to look at more than one brand of car.

    In my humble opinion, if you can't differentiate between candidates from the "other" party (say, you're a Democrat and you see no difference between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush), you're in danger of becoming a partisan ideologue. There are huge differences between the nine or so Republicans duking it out, and even the two Democrats are sharply divided on most issues.  

   The Democratic National Committee has done a good job of eliminating potential candidacies of people like Elizabeth Warren who is young enough and bright enough to make a difference.  Hillary Clinton is their annointed candidate, with only Bernie Sanders to challenge her.  Bernie is apparently too naughty to obey the memo.  The Republican primary is kind of like the clown car in the circus, with all sorts of zany characters along for the ride.  I think there may be a good one in there someplace, but I'm not sure.  

    I don't know who it I'm going to vote for for President, but I know it won't be Hillary Clinton, or Ted Cruz.   Clinton is addicted to war in the Middle East, in my opinion.  I believe as Scretary of State she hoped American would lead an extended Arab Spring revolution to "liberate" Arab peoples via the "Regime Change" policy, in which the US is allowed to take down foreign governments as kind of a public service to the inhabitants, but which instead is dragging down the US economy and nobody seems to much like us in the Middle East despite our wonderful intentions.  This is simply a disaster, compounding the mistakes of the Bush Administration, and I can't accept it or even make sense of it. Why in the world are we intervening in a Civil War in Syria while not supporting either of the two warring parties?  Cruz on the other hand, appears to be incapable of accepting a compromise, and moreover tried via filibustering to cause the US government to default on the Federal Deficit in order to destroy the banking system.  I'm not sure how either of these two got to the point of being so highly respected as politicians.     

Can somebody please do better than these two, I hope?  

     If the major parties diverge too far from reality, might a third party candidacy take hold? Michael Bloomberg may be leaning that way.  

    Earlier, I offered the opinion that a third party might emerge this year for a number of reasons.  Perhaps even someone with some common sense might be needed if the major parties veer too far from the sensible center.  We're hearing now that Michael Bloomberg is strongly considering a run.  That might be a good thing.

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