Republicans are so anxious to replace President Barack Obama in the White House that they may be losing sight of what really matters, and in turn end up supporting someone who isn’t that different.
Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, is the commanding preference for the GOP nomination; along with former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., in second place. However, the top contenders are definitely not the best choices for our nation.
Perry and Romney are in the lead simply because they have been able to avoid severe scrutiny from the media thus far, not because they would necessarily be better leaders than our current president and make the changes we’re really looking for.
Perry is too radical in a one-on-one showdown between Obama. While he may get many die-hard conservative votes, Romney would have a higher chance of receiving more middle-ground votes.
This leaves Republicans looking to Romney, which is as equally grim of an outcome. Romney’s handling of Massachusetts’s health care reform is too reminiscent of Obama’s reform, a reform that many Republicans are adamantly opposed to.
Romney lacks the characteristics of a strong leader because he is too fickle with his policies. He changed his stance from pro-choice to pro-life in an attempt to please voters. Who knows what other stances he’ll change, especially if he can’t even stand by his true beliefs?
U.S. citizens don’t need a people-pleaser running their country, and Romney is too willing to change his position to what his “market” is looking for. Politicians like this are too quick to make hefty claims and they never follow through.
The crisis within the GOP is that there is too much irrelevant information circulating and this is skewing perceptions of the candidates. This makes it hard for citizens to get an accurate feel for what they want to stand for. Perry and Romney are only the front runners of the GOP race because they have mostly been able to avoid this.
Candidates like Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum on the other hand, have been devastated by a stream of personal attacks that have nothing to do with their leadership capabilities.
Palin’s “celebrity” status eclipses any of her political remarks. Santorum’s reputation has been so damaged by liberal journalists that any attempt to look into his policies are met with media generated vulgarity rather than actual information. These journalists even launched a campaign to change the meaning of his name to something obscene so that he is known not for who he is as a person, but rather as an obscenity.
Several candidates hold ideas that could lower national debt faster by cutting national spending, as opposed to Obama’s most recent plan, which looks at increasing taxation on wealthy Americans.
Many of these candidates offer the changes the GOP are looking for, changes they aren’t finding in Obama, but none of these candidates have a chance as of right now. Republican voters aren’t looking for a different type of president, but they are willing to settle for a different type of Obama.
Voters need to stop backing career politicians and actually look into matters themselves. Find those who are actually fiscally and socially sound, with the intent to carry out what they say.
