The Presidential Nomination Trail: The Republican Party
May 2, 2016
The 2016 Presidential Election trail has definitely been one of the most amusingly disappointing and unsettling campaigning years in a while. The candidates are supposed to be vying for our vote to have a chance at leading our country, but instead are having cafeteria-roast sessions on stage during the debates, attempting to demonstrate why the others are not worthy of leading the country instead of displaying themselves as a viable candidate, and it is upsetting.
Yes, I’m addressing the Republican Party here. There was a plethora of Republican candidates at the start of the campaigning season, but most have fallen off of the trail simply because of their inability to garner the attention needed to stay relevant.
Our first and most vehemently problematic candidate is none other than Donald Trump. For months and months on end, political talk has not been about what candidates have done right, but more focused on what they are doing wrong, and Trump was the most common offender. Having made several ‘ignorant’ statements in what is now a politically-correct society, Trump has garnered most of his nationwide attention via the massive news coverage that resulted from insulting or attacking a person or group of people.
For example, his statements about the making a wall on the country’s southern border in order to prevent illegal immigrant is still brought up today as a form of mockery. But what’s even more disappointing is that the attention that he is getting from this is also gathering votes for him as people fail to acknowledge that there is a significant portion of the community that seem to agree with his stance on how this country should work, and thus all this media coverage is just putting his face and message to all those people that agree with him, and thus support him.
Secondly, let’s talk about Cruz. Ted Cruz has been Trump’s largest thorn in the side and definitely the Republican with the best chance of stopping Trump from getting the nomination, but he’s still flawed as well, given his open attacks on many politically-correct stances like permitting transgender people to access either bathroom, or even just attacking the people themselves in repeatedly mentioning how politically correct this country has become, and how voicing ‘negative’ or ‘closed-minded’ opinions is automatically met with hostility rather than discussion, which while accurate, is not a thing necessary to be addressing when you are supposed to be convincing us that we want you in office.
Lastly we have Marco Rubio who, while not in the race any longer, was still more of a factor than Kasich, the third remaining Republican candidate. Rubio’s entire campaign came down after he failed to win his home state, which was not a surprise, considering that his platform was abysmal made up mainly of attacks and criticisms rather than beliefs (besides the 30 second loop of a position that Chris Christie called him out on). He spent a majority of the time on the trail simply attacking the other candidates rather than saying anything meaningful, and that can only get you so far in the race.
The overall problem here is that the remainder of the Republican Party’s candidates do not come across as people worthy of being the President, but are still gathering a massive following and continue working their way onto the ballot as a potential threat to either Democrat’s chances at becoming the President. More worrisome is that people refuse to acknowledge that the problem is the amount of votes they have, and not the things they are saying. If you don’t like what people are saying, then you don’t give them attention or support, as those things only make their message more powerful and prominent. This is why people need to pay more attention to politics and properly identify what is going on, because we are currently headed into a possibly terrible presidential election, in which the winner could very well be someone that really does not need to be in office.
