Skip to main content

The Republicans should stop running for president



These days it seems like everybody is running for president. Guys you’ve heard, guys you haven’t, and guys you don’t even want to hear about. There are governors, senators, formers and current CEOs of large companies and even a retired neurosurgeon getting into the act. There are so many candidates that soon we might be hearing Bugs Bunny has finally decided to try for the GOP Nomination. (That is one candidacy I might find myself backing, by the way.)
 
But back in January, Paul Ryan, the running mate on Mitt Romney’s ultimately doomed ticket in 2012, announced he is not running. Of course, that didn’t make the national news in a big way; nobody started around the clock coverage of his decision not to run. But now that announcing a bid for the Republican nomination seems to have become the Grand Old Party’s pastime, it seems like Ryan’s decision not to run should have received more attention, for the reasons he gave were not only good ones, but they showed a level of maturity many of the bids, which everyone including their candidate must know are doomed to failure, do not have.
Ryan announced in January he is staying in congress because he believes he has work to do. He wants to overhaul the tax code. Of course, that job is going to take a very long, and most don’t think he will even be able to bring his new plan, should he even finish the massive job before the second coming, will even come up for a vote for at least a year from now. But Ryan is proof that the Republican Party still has people in it that are willing to do what they were elected to do-that is, actually govern this nation rather than use their seat as a stepping stone to the White House.
The influx of sitting senators and governors seeking the nomination is especially difficult for Republicans, as in 2016 their new found hold on the Senate will be tested, as so many Republican seats are up for grabs, compared to a relatively small number of Democratic ones.
 
Taking a look at Rubio, who has announced he will not also be running for senate, and Paul, who probably will also not run for reelection to the senate, just to name two seats that will now be much easier for Democrats to take. Then there are governors like Christi, whose BridgeGate scandal many believe will hurt him if he decides to run for president, conceivably that means he will also be hurt at home in New Jersey, and paradoxically he would spending less effort and time in his bid at reelection to governor, should he lose his shot at the White House.
Then there are all the presumably eligible, interested and capable people, from Carson to Santorum to Huckabee to Fiorina, all of whom are not in office, and all of whom are running for president; which means of course that even were one of those four to win, three would still be left out in the cold.
It seems that with all of the long shots in the race, it would be much better if most of them were to abandon their bids, and do something unthinkable-run for lower office. Of course they don’t want to do that. They think they see a chance for them and they want to be president. It’s a perfectly understandable desire, but also perfectly dangerous to the Republican Party as so many of their best and brightest are risking it all on a presidential run, and by the laws elimination only one of them can win, while at the same time leaving the rest battered and bruised.
So it seems to me, and the facts tend to agree, that the best thing for the Republican Party right now would be if a lot of them stopped trying so hard to be president, and got back to running for other offices if they’re out, and actually governing if they’re in. It’s counterintuitive, I know, especially these days. But it’s the best thing for them. Sorry if the medicine doesn’t always taste good.

Andrew C. Abbott

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Create Your Own Social Networking Site

Create Your Own Social Networking Site JCOW: Ethical Hacking Top 10 reasons to choose Jcow:- 1. Handle more traffic - Clean codes and Dynamic caching can lower the CPU load and  speed up your website. 2 Make your site more interactive - Well designed Jcow applications help you members to connect and communicate with others more effectively. 3 Add questions to the Registration Form - You can add new member fields, which will be displayed to the registration form, profile form, and the member browsing form. 4 Easily share stuff - Within the AJAX sharing Box, your members can publish status,  photos, videos, and blogs. 5 Customize and Extend your Jcow Network - A Jcow network consists of core apps(like "Friends" and "Messages") and optional apps(like "Blogs" and ""Videos"). You can enable/disable optional apps. You can also develop your own apps. 6 Every profile could be Unique - Members can customize their own profile theme and  add music play...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Problem of Abstraction in Definitions of Data Objects

I think there is a major problem in not being able to understand and work with different levels of abstraction.  By "abstraction" in this sense I mean one concept system that somehow describes or defines (not merely relates to) another concept system.  I think this is a big problem for definitions in data models. Let us take an example in a retail business such as mortgage banking: Customer Name.  Customer Name exists in the business.  They use it all the time.  Maybe it is sometimes called Borrower Name, but the concept is the same.  This is the Level 1 abstraction. Now let us think of data values in a column in a table that holds Customer Name.  These data values are stored as a code of 1's and 0's.  Of course these bits are rendered into something we can read.  However, this is not the same as the Customer Name in the business.  I worked for a place where they prefixed the name of anyone who had recently left with "ZZZ"....
Post a Comment
Read more

The Problems of Pluto - 2: What is a Definition Authority?

In a previous post (http://definitionsinsemantics.blogspot.com/2011/11/evolution-of-definitions-problem-of.html) the topic of the IAU's 2006 redefinition of the term "planet" was discussed (see http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/detail/iau0603/).  There are many topics relevant to definitions surrounding this event - one of them is the problem of authority.  The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the organization that came up with the new definition of "planet".  Does this make it an authority?  It does if we define "authority" as "a source of a definition that publishes, and administers, and supports this definition".  However, the term "authority" carries emotional content also.  "Authority" can imply (a) a role of active enforcement; (b) an obligation of obedience upon the body politic.  These implications exist because "authority" is a term that defines many concepts, and some of them have to do with...
Post a Comment
Read more