Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Is it too late for the Republicans to find a normal candidate

Here there is not one political party that rules. One would want a choice. While one could say that the intelligence of the Republican candidates is not in doubt, their sanity certainly is. The debates have been fascinating theater. Unfortunately there is not one candidate that is close to normal, at least from this perspective.

---Romney --- a robotic enigma and a compulsive liar who makes George Bush the First look like the salt of the earth. He is anti-social and incredibly awkward. He has no concept of how his comments might be viewed. He is not close to normal, despite supposedly being a good family man.

---Gingrich --- is an out of control egomanic and a compulsive liar as well who is supported by his barbie Castrista(did I spell that right?). Romney might be generally unattractive, but Gingrich is dangerous. He is not close to normal.

---Santorum --- based on his record in his years in the Senate he has almost Islamist beliefs about imposing his "values" on this country. He is a "wolf in sheep's clothing" and completely unprepared to lead this country. He is only normal in his milieu.

---Paul --- a world class eccentric, by far the most interesting person to listen to here, but he espouses immediately dismantaling our monetary system and military upon election, an action that would be borderline insane. Let's just see how bad the damage to the world financial system would be? He is an abnormally strict libertarian, part of which is good and part of which would be dangerous.

Here, someone to oppose Obama would be welcome. He has been a disappointment, but one who has faced incredibly difficult challenges set up by prior administrations and a radically obstructionist Republican opposition. That's partly his fault, as his Chicago cabal could easily be compared to Jimmy Carter's Georgia one.

His health care bill and especially the Dodd-Frank bill started out with good intentions and if kept simple would have been laudable achievements. They became more than 2000 page bills loaded with really bad inserts by the Democratic majority in Congress at the time. Some inserts could almost be called graft, well they could be, and some could be seen as resentful paybacks with broad consequences. Some are simply overly intense goverment intervention. Obama gave in to all of this to see his important goals achieved.

Republicans are absolutely right when they say that community banking is being absolutely crippled by the combination of Dodd-Frank and the Bush 2 bill Sarbanes Oxley. The regulators are destroying them, and after the debacle of the mortgage disaster, why would good policy seek to destroy community banks. That's just one example.

So all of that is to say one would want a choice in November. The Republicans are not on a course to provide one. Here, Huntsman seemed like a positive choice, no support, no chance. Jeb Bush is mentioned by some, conservative to a fault but he has run a multi-cultural state and has a multi-cultural family as well, and he certainly knows the drill of being President. The Republicans need a normal candidate. Maybe no one normal would run for President.


Postscript --- just saw tonight that the oddball Donald Trump is again considering his entry into the race. If that does not underscore what this post has said, nothing could.

1 Comments:

Anonymous old banker said...

One major New York bank has over 200 lawyers working on Dodd Frank implementation. Seven years ago Sarbanes Oxley doubled accounting departments. How do community banks possibly deal with these complex rules and requirements.

4:00 PM  

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