We're starting to come down to the final four presidential candidates: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and of course the current president Barack Obama. Rick Santorum believes he has a chance. He doesn't. He really only appeals to hardcore Christian fundamentalists, and pushes everyone else VERY far away.
We all know where Obama is going to stand. His speeches and platforms (at least what he tells us) is the most left and moderate of the not five. You can argue on whether or not he will actually follow up on these promises, and I'd agree with you in light of the past four years. If he becomes president, we as a people will need to hold his feet to the fire. However, I think he understands now that Congress is pretty much against him and won't work with him on anything that doesn't benefit them or their sponsors.
Newt Gingrich... there are a lot of things to say about this slimeball. The first is that he wants to eliminate child labor laws, particularly for poor children, thinking that it will teach them a "strong work ethic". That alone is pretty fucking bad. Go read about child labor in the industrial revolution, where children had to work in coal mines and cotton mills, where they suffered debilitating injuries and even death from getting caught in processing machines. Not to mention that they're better off attending school and receiving an education so they don't grow up to be stupid, they can shoot for higher education (spoiler: college is a work ethics stress test) and can get a much better job than "Janitor". I should mention that school as a whole builds up a work ethic. He also builds himself on a platform of moral superiority and immunity. He railed against Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky Scandal while he was cheating on his second wife and later divorcing her for his mistress. Gingrich also wanted to fire Supreme Court justices that made any rulings he didn't agree with, and fire federal employees he felt were too liberal (which is fucking illegal), and put an end to gay rights. Oh right, he also preaches about the sanctity of marriage, while he's on his third marriage, whom he was schtupping while married to his second wife, who he fucked while his third wife went through chemo! Newt Gingrich is a projector and believes the rules of the world don't apply to him.
Mitt Romney is the definition of a corporate robot. The fact that he's a Mormon is a non-issue, and fuck whoever tries to make it an issue. He works best when working off whatever program is coded into him while they're winding him up every morning. If he doesn't go off the cuff, he'll reiterate what he just said like a pull-string doll, and when he goes off the cuff he self destructs. In one video in a face off against an Occupy protester, he basically called out the guy as being "anti-American" and implied that there is no middle ground between whatever fucked up system we've got going on right now and communism in Cuba or Soviet Russia. He firmly believes that corporations are people and wants sweeping deregulations in Wall Street and the banks, alongside shrinking government and making spending cuts in nondefense areas and increasing defense spending.
Ron Paul is considered the nuclear option of the candidates. We all know he's basically reading the Ayn Rand playbook and wants to destroy all government, including education, the FDA and EPA. All of it, out the fucking window. In light of the racist newsletters under his name that came into the spotlight recently, I get a strong vibe that he wants to basically turn the entire country into an Old West, where it's every man for themselves, and somehow, if we let the private sector do whatever they want, we'll achieve a libertarian utopia.
Rick Santorum, if you seriously think he stands a chance, is as I said, too hardcore fundamentalist for most people to swallow, and doesn't live in reality. If you know someone who believes he's a Super Saiyan Jedi Knight Lucario, THAT guy is more in tune to reality than Rick Santorum. He believes that gay marriage is a blight on society, that abortion is evil, and that pregnancy from rape is a gift from God. He believes Obama wants kids to go to college to be indoctrinated into liberalism, and buys into the whole school = indoctrination bullshit.
Obama's best tactic - and one he's already following - is to appear more moderate and left than everyone else, who have gone so far to the right they've hurled themselves off a cliff. His best bet is to hope that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich destroy each other, and those missiles are already in the air. Preferably Gingrich will go down first. Once they're out of the race, his last opponent will be Ron Paul, and I believe he'd be able to win that fight. I don't think enough people want to abolish government, but I can't confirm that. I've seen a lot of Ron Paul worshippers in real life. Keep in mind I don't like Obama after the past 4 years, but he's at least being moderate, and I'm calling it like I see it.
