Tomorrow is the day that Ohio holds its primary election. Needless to say, I will be voting for Bernie Sanders and hope he does well. The ACLU of Ohio has put out a three-step guide to voting.
The election has turned really ugly with violence breaking out at Donald Trump rallies which he has, as usual, responded to in a variety of ways, saying that they were caused by outside agitators (he fingers Bernie Sanders supporters) and saying that he would pay the legal bills of those of his supporters charged with violence. Sanders and Hillary Clinton have blasted him for the violence and his response, with Sanders calling him a ‘pathological liar’.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has been campaigning in the state for John Kasich who is locked in a close race with Trump. Whether this quasi-endorsement by Romney, coupled with the Marco Rubio campaign telling their supporters to vote for Kasich, will give the Kasich a sufficient boost to put him over the top remains to be seen. Kasich is increasingly being seen as the latest in the series of ‘establishment’ choices after the candidacies of Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie imploded and since Marco Rubio’s star is now fading and he may well lose the primary in his home state of Florida, likely ending his campaign.
A plague on all their houses!
I predict this will not happen. Because it would cost him money.
Meanwhile in the People’s Republic of Seattle the Seattle Times endorsed Sanders for those participating in the Democratic caucus on March 26th and Kasich for those participating in the Republican primary on May 24th. Apparently Seattle is leading among major cities in contributions to Bernie’s campaign.
IMHO the deciding factors are not the individual presentations and performances of the GOP candidates:
Trump is a carnival barker willing to say or do anything to look good, even if it means undertaking a fair impersonation of Mussolini and rolling around in the proverbial ‘mud, blood and beer’, resorting to base insults, the language of blood and soil, and becoming drunk on rage and hate.
Cruz has all the surface characteristics of a hollowed out revival tent preacher with a unnatural attraction to generic vodka, young boys, and heavy-duty mayonnaise. (Hat tip to Charlie for that phrase.) Yes, he is twisted, perverse, and so comfortable in that environment that he reflexively drags people down into his dark world of hate and fear so he can more easily manipulate them. Perversely, while doing so, believes himself to be morally superior to those he corrupts.
Rubio, has clearly been raised in a cloistered environment. He is a child. He is desperate for validation and acceptance. I fully expect that if he were to turn around and bend over we would see the control stick stuffed up his ass peeking out.
All of those are damning enough to warn off any sentient being thinking of voting for them. But, on the other hand, those characteristics are superficial and, largely, a matter of performance and presentation.
I suggest that there is a deeper, much more probative and logically consistent , reason to avoid all of them: all of them have signed off on the GOP catechism of small government, across the board privatization, deregulation, tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, unlimited access to firearms, incorporation of religion specific values and rules into law, and sale of public property and assets to individuals and corporations.
If you vote Republican you are going to get more of that GOP catechism imported into our society and laws. It doesn’t matter what sort of fancy label you put on a bottle of poison, it is still poison.
Donald Trump wavers on paying legal fees for violent supporters
Small government unless you’re a woman! Then the bigger the better.
Or a transperson who may need to use a public restroom. Then the party of small government wants genital checks and DNA tests before you can go.