I'm Not Voting for Hillary Clinton

You can't make me vote for Hillary Clinton.  I won't do it.  The list of people I would not vote for under any circumstances has on it but one name, and that name is Hillary Clinton.  I don't even care what she says she believes in this time.  I just want her to go away.  Her and Bill are rich, and they've accomplished plenty, why won't they just go away?  Why?

Unfortunately, having only two parties to choose from, this means the Republican primary process takes on extra special significance for me this time around.  No longer are the Republicans just funny TV personalities I can laugh at and then not vote for.  I have to vote for one of these people.  So everybody focus up!  Alright?!?  I'm serious!  Time to take a look at the Republican candidates.  I was worried that the internet wouldn't have enough room on it to list all of them, but internet inventor Al Gore says we're fine.

I've broken the candidates down into three tiers.  Within each tier, I'll try to list the candidates in order from least likely to win to most likely to win.  Seriously now, I have to vote for one of these people, so let's all just pay attention and see if we can find some hope here.

Tier Three
Tier three consists of people who have the same chance at winning the Republican nomination as I do.  I couldn't tell you why they're running, and I couldn't tell you why anyone would bother donating money to them or saying their name when a pollster calls and asks who they might be voting for.  I'll still try to list these people from least likely to most likely, but keep in mind that trying to parse out the varying degrees of absolutely no chance really is splitting hairs.  Pointless, needless hairs.

Jim Gilmore
I don't know who this person is.  I assume he created Gilmore Girls and listen, girls with blue eyes and dark hair is an excellent concept for a TV show.  I wish every show was based around that general theme.  But Gilmore Guy here isn't going to be President.  Sorry.

Carly Fiorina
Being an actual person I've heard of is a good start.  Carly was CEO of Hewlett-Packard for a while, and was apparently terrible at it.  To be fair, taking over a tech company in 1999 was a little like taking over as Brittney Spears' manager in 1999.  You knew it wasn't going to end well, but somebody had to do it. 

Being a former CEO whose claim to fame was lay-offs certainly didn't stop Mitt Romney from winning the Republican nomination.  Mitt, however, was at least a governor at some point.  Carly once ran for the Senate and lost.  I don't think that's going to cut it.  Also, Carly is awful on TV.  Really awful.  If you ever get a chance to see her do an interview on Fox, watch for as long as you can just to see what I'm talking about.  You won't last long.

Lindsey Graham 
I can't figure out what Lindsey Graham is doing.  He always struck me as a guy who was perfectly happy being a career Senator.  I suppose if he and John McCain are ever going to build a blanket fort in the White House, it's up to Lindsey now.  Unfortunately, "John McCain is my best friend" isn't exactly a killer campaign slogan when you're dealing with the Republican base.  They still think McCain ruined Sarah Palin's epic run for the White House.

Bobby Jindal
Take your pick of reasons why Bobby won't win.  How about doing everything but setting his own shirt on fire during a comically awful State of the Union response?  Or how about the fact that he looks and sounds like a little kid pretending to be his dad every time you see him speaking?  Or how about the fact the apparently everyone in Louisiana hates him?  Or how about the fact that nobody will take you seriously if you're a 44 year old man who still calls himself Bobby? 

George Pataki
You probably think I have Pataki ranked a little high, right near the top of the people who have absolutely no chance.  Maybe it's my New York bias, but I don't understand why George isn't doing a little better.  Then again, I haven't actually seen him do anything since I found out he was running for President.  George knows that in order to run for President you have to like, leave your house and stuff, right?

Tier Two
Tier two consists of people who, under the right circumstances, could hypothetically win the nomination.  For a couple of them, those circumstances would mostly involve leading a military coup, or having a deadly virus kill all the other candidates.  Still, I think each of these people has some plausible, if improbable, path to the nomination.

Ben Carson
I know, you think Ben should be higher.  I disagree.  Carson is one of two candidates who are specifically hurt by Donald Trump.  The tea party failed because it became a magnet for everyone in the Republican party who wanted to get angry about everything without actually having to learn about anything.  Carson looked like he might be their guy in 2016, but then Trump came along and boy, talk about being angry without actually learning anything!  The Trump train will wreck eventually, but by the time it does Carson will be lucky to still get his show on Fox, which is really all he wanted in the first place.

Ted Cruz
The other guy Trump is absolutely burying is Ted Cruz, for basically the same reason.  Ever since he got to the Senate Ted Cruz has been the champion of being loud and disagreeable.  Now he takes a firm back seat in that category to Mr. Trump.  Second place in the loud and disagreeable competition is just the first loser.  If Trump disappears more quickly than I expect, his voters will have to go somewhere and Ted still has a platform as a Senator.  Unfortunately for Ted (and fortunately for the rest of us, in this context at least), I don't think Trump is leaving anytime soon and until he does, Ted stays buried.

Rick Perry
Presidents from Texas have a tendency to get us into intractable quagmires overseas.  And with so many potential quagmires available to us currently, I'm confident that Republican voters will recognize that Mr. Perry is not the guy right now.  Also, he's terrible at debating and might actually be a moron.  I'm not a big fan, is I guess what I'm saying. 

Mike Huckabee
I'm a little disappointed in Huck.  Growing up, the priests always told us to love the sinner and hate the sin.  Some of them were better at that than others.  I always thought Mike was pretty good at genuinely not hating the people he believes to be sinners.  Now I'm not so sure. 

Mike's path to the nomination has always been the same.  Rally the social conservatives and stick around long enough to go one on one with the establishment candidate, with enough primaries left to make it a real fight.  This time around, I wonder how much fight the social conservatives have left in them.  They keep losing, in public opinion, in the courts, with former Olympic athletes who they thought were cool.  At some point, some percentage of those folks have to give up and move on to other things.  I don't think there's enough left to take Huck anywhere good, but I guess we'll see.

Donald Trump
I know, I know.  But he's doing so well in the polls! How can you not even have him in the first tier??  Let me ask you an honest question.  Do you really think Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination?  I don't.  I think he'll stay in for a while, probably at least into March.  But as other candidates start to drop out, two things will happen. 

First of all, nobody who is supporting any other candidate, except for maybe Cruz and Carson, will come over to Trump when their guy leaves.  Every time someone gets out of the race, everyone else will get some new voters and Trump will stay where he is now.  Secondly, while Trump will probably look pretty good in Thursday's debate with nine other people, eventually he'll wind up on stage with just two or three other people and that's when his real weakness will get exposed.  He's a lightweight.  He doesn't know anything about governing or public policy.  That's fine when you're one of 17 people shouting at the TV cameras, it's less fine when you're on stage trying to debate 2 or 3 people who have spent their lives working in government. 

Trump can't win for the same reason I can't be a famous guitarist.  I think I'd be an awesome famous guitarist!  I'd be so charitable if I was rich and I'd always sign autographs for fans.  I'd always be on tour and I'd play colleges and charity events for free because I'd be rich anyway and you can only spend so much money.  I'd be great at this!  Oh but there's this one thing, I'm terrible at playing the guitar.  Just that one thing, otherwise I'd be great.

Rick Santorum
And now you're wondering how it took me so long to get to Rick.  I've been hard on Rick in the past, and I don't agree with him a lot, but I honestly think he's a solid candidate.  Listen to Rick speak if you ever get the chance.  He talks a lot about the economy, the middle class and jobs.  He hardly ever talks about bestiality anymore.  I don't think Rick's economic plan is any good, but at least he has one, and I think he honestly wants to do good things for working people.  He's pretty genuine on the economic stuff, and I think that'll resonate if he gets a chance.

Rick was also a Senator, and from a state with actual people in it.  He understands how governing works and he has experience in primary debates.  I feel like Rick should be doing better than he is, and I have some expectation that he'll start doing better soon.  I'm not saying I like it, I'm just saying I think Santorum may be more for real than he seems right now, and I'd suggest keeping an eye on him.

Rand Paul
I have to admit to being genuinely interested in Rand at some point.  I've always been a fan of Ron Paul, and I was looking forward to seeing Rand keep up the family tradition of getting booed in Republican primary debates for being somewhat tentative about bombing everything.  Rand is still probably the guy in this field I'd be most likely to vote for, but doesn't it feel like his moment has passed a little bit? 

He really jumped on that whole NSA data collection thing, but it turned out most people didn't really care about that a lot.  And even though Rand is actually more hawkish than his dad, I think most Republicans think he's still someone who wouldn't feature explosions in his foreign policy, and I'm not sure that fits into the current Iran pants-shitting vibe the Republicans currently have going. 

Marco Rubio
All of Marco's avenues seem to be closing.  He lost the tea party people when he decided to support immigration reform and, you know, be Hispanic.  The whole anti-Castro thing doesn't really play outside of Florida.  The most generous description of his State of the Union response would be "not totally awful", which is better than Bobby Jindal's "catastrophic", but still not good. 

Rubio's best path to the nomination is the same as Barack Obama's path in 2008.  It's a pretty good path, but I wonder if this avenue is closing for Marco too.  He's no less new to the national scene than Obama was around this time in 2007, but Republicans got really excited about him and pushed him like Vince McMahon pushing a new wrestler, and now Marco already seems like he's been around for a while.  I think we may already know too much about Rubio for him to play the new guy.  Also, I'm not convinced that anyone from Congress can win this time around.  People really hate Congress.

I seem mostly down on Marco because, like Rand Paul, I think his moment may have passed.  On the other hand, Jimmy Smits won the election on the West Wing, and if anyone is a Republican Matt Santos, it's this guy.

John Kasich
Kasich is the hardest guy on the list to place, because he just got in.  He's a governor, so he's not tainted by being a member of Congress.  He's a swing state governor, and he seems to be a least mildly popular in his state.  He has legitimate experience governing.  Republicans have seemed quietly excited about Kasich for a while now. 

Kasich sort of quietly announced his candidacy right in the middle of Trumpageddon.  Sometimes a bad launch can kill a campaign.  I don't know if that'll happen to Kasich, he seems pretty legit, but it's really hard to say right now.  It looks like he'll probably make Thursday's debate, and I expect he'll do pretty well, and then he should be on his way to the top tier.

Tier One
Tier one candidates are the people who are currently legitimate contenders.  People who I think can win without anything weird happening.  One of these guys would make a really awful President, but the other two would probably be not completely terrifying.

Chris Christie
Maybe I need to give up on Chris.  Maybe this just isn't going to happen.  I'm not ready yet though.  He's the only guy in this field who won't put up with getting bullied by Trump.  His experience as a U.S. Attorney should kill in debates about security.  He's well known and currently a Governor.  The fact that MSNBC still won't stop crying about the George Washington Bridge also leads me to believe that liberals are genuinely afraid of Christie. 

Will social conservatives ever really trust him?  No, but they didn't trust Romney or McCain either and they eventually dealt with it.  Does he need to get his poll numbers up?  Yes he does.  He may not even make the stage on Thursday.  It seems like he's got enough financial backing to hang around for a while, and he should do better once some of the other people start dropping out.  I think he'll get the Rubio people, maybe the Perry people, maybe even the Huckabee people if they don't go to Santorum.  I still think he can win, soon I may be the only one left.

Scott Walker
Walker seems to remind Republicans of Reagan, which is a terrible thing for anyone who actually understands what kind of President Reagan was in real life, but an awesome thing for Scott in the Republican primary.  He's also become the patron saint of union bashing, another killer trait for a Republican.  If I thought Scott Walker was actually a decent candidate, he'd be the clear favorite.  He doesn't really seem like a decent candidate though.  He seems like an empty suit that's been filled with talking points and billionaires' political wishes.  Like I said, he's a lot like Reagan.

Jeb Bush
I think Jeb is still the favorite.  I know his poll numbers never move and he doesn't really seem to do or say much, but consider a few other things.  He's incredibly well-funded, he was a swing state Governor and Republican primary voters don't remember his brother nearly as negatively as the rest of us.  Would it help you to know that his real name is John?  Sounds less silly than Jeb, right?

We have to find out if Jeb actually wants to be President that much.  I'm not 100% sure he does.  I don't know that anyone is especially excited about Jeb, and maybe that's because he doesn't seem too excited about himself.  I'm not looking forward to voting for Jeb, but I think it's the most likely outcome for me.  I mean, how bad can a Bush Presidency be, right?

Epilogue
Oh and one more thing.  Did you notice how I didn't mention Newt Gingrich?  That's because he's not running this time.  If you're looking at all of these people and thinking you don't like any of them, just remember that none of them are Newt Gingrich, and that's pretty great.