I stated in my last blog that I would do a candidate comparison
on the issues in a few days. That was a week ago but better late than never so
here goes. I accessed five Internet sites in order to glean as much information
about the candidates as possible. I also hoped that by accessing five different
sites that hopefully would produce a consistent pattern. I achieved both goals.
I limited this information to only the last four candidates Cruz, Kasich,
Rubio, and Trump for two reasons: the first being those are the last four in
contention; there is a lot of information. I will make a snarky comment
occasionally throughout this process but don’t think that I am disrespecting
any of the candidates nor am I endorsing any of the candidates. Sarcasm and cynicism
are just my nature.
I start out with a site called 2016 Republican-candidates.org.
The categories I used from this site for comparison of the candidates
conservative values are as follows:
Abortion: all four candidates are pro-life.
Gun rights: Cruz and Trump support the right
of the citizens to keep and bear arms; Kasich and Rubio both support the same
thing except each supports caveats and some restrictions.
Common Core: Cruz, Rubio and Trump oppose Common
Core; Kasich supports it.
Obamacare: Cruz
and Rubio are in favor of repealing; Kasich wants to repeal some of it and keep
some of it in place; Trump wants universal health care.
Immigration: Cruz and Trump want the border closed and they oppose amnesty; Kasich leans towards amnesty; Rubio
wants amnesty for illegals.
Terrorism: all
four candidates will commit to fight terrorism everywhere.
Federal budget: all
four candidates oppose deficit spending but Kasich doesn’t believe balancing
the budget is possible.
National Security: all
support increased military spending.
Cuba: Cruz,
Kasich, and Rubio oppose reopening relationship with Cuba; Trump believes it
is okay to reopen Cuba to Americans and normalize relations with the Castro
brothers.
As you can see Cruz is the only one of the candidates that
rates hundred percent in all categories. Trump is lacking in healthcare and
Cuba. Rubio is lacking in gun rights and immigration (two of my most important
categories). Kasich is wrong on gun rights, immigration and the federal budget
making him, in my opinion, the worst candidate of the four but Rubio
in a close second place.
Another site I visited was called crowdpac.com. They did a
very simple conservative rating based on how the candidates voted, who gave
them money, etc.
Cruz rated a 99%
Rubio rated 62%
Trump rated 51%
Kasich rated 46%
The next site is called conservative review.com and rated
the candidates “good”, “bad”, and “neutral” in the following 11 categories:
budget and spending; civil liberties; education; energy/environment; foreign policy/defense;
free market; healthcare/entitlements; immigration; moral issues; Second
Amendment; taxes/economy/trade.
Cruz had 10 goods, no bad, and one neutral (free market).
Rubio had seven goods, one bad (immigration), and three
neutrals.
Trump had three good, three bad, and five neutrals (doesn’t
look all that conservative to me).
The next site I visited was called president-candidate.insidegov.com. They used four categories to rate the conservatism of each of the
candidates. They rated them on a scale of 1 to 10; one being the least
conservative; 10 being the most. The four categories are: individual rights,
domestic issues, economic issues, and defense/international issues. I added the
four scores and came up with an average for each candidate:
Cruz scored 32 points overall and ended up with a
conservative rating of 8 out of 10.
Rubio scored 27 points overall and ended up with a
conservative rating of 6.75 out of 10.
Kasich scored 20 points overall and ended up with a
conservative rating of 5 out of 10.
Trump scored 16 points overall and ended up with a conservative
rating of 4 out of 10.
Hillary scored -27 points overall and ended up with a
conservative rating of -6.75 out of 10
.
Bernie scored -34 points overall and ended up with a
conservative rating of -8.5 out of 10.
I added the last two names just to give an idea of how
thoroughly opposite the top conservative candidates are as opposed to the top
liberal candidates. Ted Cruz is a normal American and Bernie Sanders is a
typical socialist.
The last site I used was Bing.com and a chart called “political
index”. The index consisted of 10 categories showing the candidates conservative
ratings in a horizontal bar chart. I listed the 10 categories and listed each
of the four candidates in the order they appear on the chart:
Abortion: Rubio Cruz Trump Kasich
Drug Policy: Rubio Kasich Trump Cruz
Education: Trump Cruz Kasich Rubio
Environment: Cruz Trump Rubio Kasich
Gun Control: Cruz Rubio Trump Kasich
Healthcare: Cruz Rubio Trump Kasich
Immigration Reform: Cruz Trump Rubio Kasich
LBGT rights: Cruz Rubio Trump Kasich
Social Security: Cruz Kasich Trump Rubio
Tax Reform: Rubio Cruz Kasich Trump
I went a little further and assigned points (4, 3, 2, 1)
from best to worst and came up with a total point score for all 10 categories with
the best possible score being 40:
Cruz scored 34 out of 40; Rubio scored 27 out of 40; Trump
scored 23 out of 40; and Kasich scored 16. Cruz and Trump scored on the liberal
side of the spectrum on drug policy. Kasich and Trump barely broke onto the conservative
side on the LBGT Rights. Rubio scored on the liberal side on Social Security.
Trump scored on the liberal side on tax reform.
There are thousands of Internet sites to be accessed that
have opinions and ratings for all the candidates regardless of their political
leanings. I used only five but as you can see they all pretty much followed the
same levels of rating the conservative candidates. The pattern I saw emerge from
the five sites gave Cruz the most conservative ratings followed by Rubio and
Trump leaving Governor Kasich in the dust. On the other hand, I believe Kasich
to be the nicest man of the group, but alas, nice doesn’t cut it as a
personality trait that you would want in your president. On the other side of
the coin, Trump is the nastiest of the group; most egotistical; self-loving
jerk I’ve ever witnessed. That is a very bold statement after having lived the
last 7+ years under King Hussein Obama the First! Cruz and Rubio are both
borderline too young to have enough experience to lead the Free World. But then
again, that’s why we have presidential advisers.
As you can tell I’m not overly thrilled with the prospect of
having to vote for any of the four for president by will not hesitate to do so
considering the alternative is either Hillary or Bernie. Either of those possibilities
disgust me. And while I’m on the topic I would like to mention my complete and
utter disgust toward the candidates through the entire GOP debate debacle. I am
65 years old and I’ve never in my lifetime witnessed the complete disrespect
the GOP candidates have shown to each other. The lack of civility; the complete
disregard for the truth; the contemptible name-calling; and the despicable childish
behavior must leave the entire world wondering how the United States of America
had ever achieved such a high moral standard. I watched most of the first
debate, less than half of the second debate, and have not watched a minute of
it since. With so many in the media pointing out how horrible these debate
antics have been you would think the candidates would tone it down a little. I
watch the media clips of the worst portions just to remind myself why I stopped
watching. Watching the antics and listening to the rhetoric of our future
leaders disheartens me and just makes me sad all over.
I can think of hundreds of normal people with no affiliation
to Washington DC, or politics in general for that matter, who would be a better
president than the GOP and liberal candidates that we will have to choose from.
I am by no means the president of the Don Stuart Fan Club but I would not
hesitate for a second to nominate him for president in lieu of our current
choices! But here we go again, back in the same position as the last three
presidential elections, having to hold my nose when I go vote.
God Bless America!!!
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