Meet The Most Likely 2016 Republican Presidential Candidates (Most Of Them Are Nuts)

With Hillary Clinton apparently eyeing off an April launch date for her presidential campaign, the US election season looks set to kick off in full force. What this means, of course, is a series of awkward baby-kissing encounters, another world-record attempt by Iowans for the most simultaneous eye-rolls, and debates with suitably sassy one-liners.

But it also means the potential for glory. Not the glory of becoming president: the glory of a gaffe or campaign fumble so fantastic that it lives forever, overshadowing any number of legislative or personal achievements. Howard Dean, early frontrunner in the 2004 Democratic campaign, knows exactly what’s up.

Unfortunately, as the left lines up behind Clinton, a real Democratic primary fight is looking like nothing but an elusive dream — meaning material on Democratic candidates is running sadly low (though Clinton may provide her fair share of gaffery).

Fortunately, the Republican field is another story. All but one of these hitherto accomplished individuals will, like Icarus, burn out spectacularly before experiencing a lifetime of regret and/or a career as a Fox News commentator.

Just who will be 2016’s Newt “Moon Base” Gingrich or Herman “Uzbeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” Cain? Let’s take a walk though the most likely candidates.

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Jeb Bush

Yep, another Bush is running for president, even though his own mother has said that America has “had enough Bushes”. At this stage Jeb is a frontrunner for the nomination due to his past experience as Governor of Florida, his centrist reputation and his early campaign announcement.

But this announcement was the least exciting thing that has ever happened: a tweet linking to a Facebook post claiming that he would “actively” “explore” the “possibility” of running for president. Before this I can only assume that he was lazily exploring the potential of thinking about doing it.

I am excited to announce I will actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States: https://t.co/luY4lCF2cA.

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) December 16, 2014

Although he was booed by a small number of attendees at a recent conference who believe he isn’t conservative enough, Jeb received some positive reviews noting that he looked “presidential”. Part of Jeb’s appeal to the wider media is that his moderate approach, at least on issues like immigration, seems better suited to a general election.

Things may get more complicated when reporters decide to start digging back into the 2000 Gore-Bush Florida recount and then-Governor Jeb’s role in the affair.

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Scott Walker

Three important things to know about Scott Walker:

1) He’s a little confused on the difference between domestic and foreign policy

2) He loves Ronald Reagan

3) He really, really loves Ronald Reagan

Allow me to explain. Scott Walker is the Governor of Wisconsin (a state famous for its cheese, and for being the setting of That ‘70s Show), and is known for his enthusiastic union-busting. In 2011 Walker faced massive protests due to his attempts to cut benefits for public workers and weaken public-sector unions.

The upshot was that, when asked how a President Walker might deal with ISIS, he responded, “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe.” Because leadership. Or something.

Apparently Walker really does struggle to differentiate domestic industrial relations policy and international relations policy. During another discussion on US foreign policy, he again turned to unions.

You might note that firing striking union workers is not the invasion of Vietnam or Iraq, or the recognition of the People’s Republic of China, or even an actual international relations decision at all. No, for Walker foreign policy basically means WorkChoices.

The reason for Walker’s stance becomes clearer with the knowledge that he has a love of Reagan beyond what could be considered even borderline creepy. Now, holding up Reagan as a kind of demi-god is almost compulsory for Republican presidential candidates, but Walker manages to take his hero worship to a weirder place than usual.

Each year, Walker and his wife Tonette host a dinner party on Reagan’s birthday where “we serve his favorite foods — macaroni and cheese casserole, and red, white, and blue Jelly Belly jelly beans”. Even better, Reagan’s birthday is also Walker’s wedding anniversary, meaining that Tonette Walker’s anniversary is regularly overshadowed by a former politician’s birthday.

The thing to keep in mind? The fact that Walker is currently on equal footing with Jeb Bush as frontrunner.

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Chris Christie

Poor New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. It seemed like he was killing it until recently. Although he often just straight-up yells at constituents, some believed he had a decent chance in a general election. Like Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Christie has even slow-jammed the news.

Riding high after his response to Hurricane Sandy (and a jump in approval ratings to an incredible 77 per cent), Christie was caught off guard early last year by a bruising scandal. Leaked emails revealed that senior staff in his office had arranged for lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, apparently as an act of revenge for the failure of Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor to endorse Christie in the 2013 gubernatorial election. As no warning was given, this turned the New Jersey borough of Fort Lee into what was essentially a parking lot for four days. This led to additional work for police, a minor school bus accident, and delayed emergency services, which in one instance involved the death of a 91-year-old woman.

Though no one has shown that Christie was involved himself, the scandal — which like all great American scandals has had the suffix ‘gate’ attached — was a severe blow, and ‘Bridgegate’ has continued to cast a shadow over Christie’s presidential hopes.

His remarks on the need to balance parental decision-making on vaccinations for measles — made during a multi-state measles outbreak — and a lack of foreign policy finesse rivaling Scott Walker’s have also revealed the limits of a Christie candidacy. It remains to be seen whether he will jump into the deep end.

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Ben Carson

Conservative activist Ben Carson is a pretty impressive guy. A trained neurosurgeon, he was deeply involved in a successful operation pioneering a new method to separate twins born joined at the head.

Unfortunately, he also says things like, “I find it as hard to accept the claims of evolution as it is to think that a hurricane blowing through a junkyard could somehow assemble a fully equipped and flight-ready 747.” Or that redefining marriage “is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.”

Setting aside how awesome a hurricane that could build 747s would be, Carson has long held retrograde views on homosexuality. In 2013 he was forced to apologise after an interview with Sean Hannity during which he argued that, “no group, be they gays, be they [pedophile advocacy group] NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition” of marriage.

Carson doesn’t stop there. Last year he claimed that America is “very much like Nazi Germany”. When asked if he would reconsider his stance? “You can’t dance around it.”

The argument has been put forward that politics is quite different to medicine, so on that basis Carson could be a major contender for the shortest, brightest star award. If not, and he holds on, we can look forward to him ending slavery – sorry, Obamacare. According to Carson, they’re the same thing anyway.

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Rand Paul

Not to be confused with his father, 2012 candidate and gold standard enthusiast Ron Paul, Rand Paul presents a much slicker profile. A former ophthalmologist, now Kentucky Senator and token libertarian(ish) candidate, Paul doesn’t want his dad with him on the campaign trail after stepping away from some of his father’s strong non-interventionist views on foreign policy. Still, the positions Paul takes on foreign and domestic affairs will provide some points of difference with other candidates, Republican or Democrat, as they don’t tend to line up quite as neatly.

His current priorities include a call for the US to boycott Saudi Arabia due to its treatment of women. He also supports the legalisation of medical marijuana, has said that he will “continue to fight to end the racial disparities in drug sentencing” and is concerned by the militarisation of police forces, while arguing that mandatory vaccinations are a step towards martial law and being “offended” by gay marriage. Not exactly a down-the-line partisan candidate.

President Paul would also defend the nation from the threats no one else even sees. In 2008 he opposed a secret plan “aimed at supplanting the sovereign United States with a multinational North American Union,” to be achieved through the introduction of single North American currency called the Amero and a superhighway connecting New Mexico and Toronto.

An important note: this isn’t happening.

Sadly, for those who were wondering, Paul was not named after Ayn Rand.

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Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz is a man on a mission. Despite being loathed within the Republican caucus Cruz was the first to announce a run for president of the United States. None of this Jeb Bush exploratory committee BS.

Cruz is best known for his key role in the 2013 US government shutdown. Because this occurred while on a personal trip to Washington, D.C., during which I was unable to enter the city’s closed museums to see spaceships and dinosaurs, Cruz holds a special place in my heart. Currently he is calling for the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service (the US equivalent of the Australian Tax Office).

But Cruz doesn’t stop there: he also wants to relocate all 125,000 IRS agents to the US-Mexico border. A big problem with this is that Cruz doesn’t actually want to abolish taxes altogether. Presumably, then, someone needs to handle this. So to resolve this conundrum he would simply establish another agency to manage tax collection and enforcement. Small government efficiency at its best.

Cruz also features in an utterly phenomenal colouring book, “Cruz to the Future,” in which he rides on the back of a giant eagle and wrestles a hydra symbolising illegal immigration, high taxes and Obamacare.

To be fair, Cruz is a Harvard Law School graduate described as “off-the-charts brilliant” by one of his professors, and in the 1990s was a law clerk for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

He’s also been described by various Republicans as “a joke,” “an amateur,” a shark-jumper and “the leader of a secret cabal of leftists”.

So what can we take from this? That Ted Cruz just doesn’t give a shit.

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Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio is the key will he/won’t he candidate for 2016, since many have him pegged as a presidential candidate eventually.

The senator from Florida made his first big foray into the national public eye in 2013 when he was selected to give the Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union address. His grab for water halfway through was later described by the New York Daily News as “the most unforgettable moment among all State of the Union responses”. This is probably overstating it, but it was fairly awkward:

Rubio bounced back and, for a freshman Senator, has developed a significant national profile. While a major problem for Rubio this round is that Jeb Bush is eating up all the Florida love (read: money), the latest is that Rubio does intend to run, with an imminent campaign launch at the aptly named Freedom Tower in Miami.

Hopefully by then he has stopped hedging on whether climate change is impacted by human activity.

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Rick Perry

Ah, Rick Perry, the poor man’s George W. Bush. Perry had a decent crack in 2012 but was forced to withdraw his candidacy and return to his day job as Texas Governor. There were a number of reasons for his fall, though a key moment was his failure to remember the third of three federal agencies he hoped to abolish during a primary debate.

It turned out this third agency (after Commerce and Education) was the Department of Energy, which, among other things, is “responsible for ensuring the integrity and safety of the nation’s nuclear weapons, advancing nuclear nonproliferation and promoting international nuclear safety”. So, no biggie.

After his bruising experience in 2012 and his more recent indictment by a Texas grand jury on two felony counts (oops), it’s unclear whether Perry will be seeking the nomination. But in case he does, it is definitely worth noting that Perry is the only potential candidate currently following ‘Free Porn’ (@porn_sex) on Twitter, providing some insight into what a Perry policy platform could look like.

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What A Ride

Outside of these figures there are a number of other possible contenders, including former Arkansas Governor and bass guitar legend Mike Huckabee, Louisiana Governor and Islamic no-go zone prophet Bobby Jindal, Senator Lindsay “I don’t email” Graham, former Senator Rick “Don’t Google my last name” Santorum, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and Senate candidate Carly Fiorina and all-round total dickhead Donald Trump.

To date, Trump is the only one to have announced he would launch an exploratory committee. Trump also tends to emerge every four years before quitting with statements like “I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and, ultimately, the general election”, so it’s difficult to take him seriously.

Despite this, the Republican primaries are sure to be a wild affair. We may not see any speed dealers or onion eating, but it’s still going to be great.

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Scott Limbrick is an international relations and politics student and writer. He has written for Meanjin, Voiceworksand G20 Watch, and tweets from @ScottLimbrick.