Editorial: These really are our best candidates?

Many primary voters will find themselves in a pickle when they start voting next week.

Texas finds itself in the unusual position of actually mattering in a primary contest for the first time in several election cycles. But the choice of candidates is, well, pathetic at best.

For Democrats, it comes down to two choices… a lying, conniving “democratic” socialist witch or an actual… but honest… socialist.

If you like the current Kitten-in-Chief, then by all means Hillary Clinton is your clear choice. But if you want a more aggressive form of give-it-all-away, pedal-to-the-metal socialism, then Bernie Sanders is your man. If Clinton’s mouth is moving, she is most likely lying. Bernie, as a fellow editor recently pointed out to me, is probably the most honest man in either party. If you make money, he’s going to tax the hell out of you and give the money to other people in the form of free health care, free college education, free whatever. There’s no beating around the bush with this guy.

The Republican side is more complicated. At one time there were between 15 and 20 people running for the nomination, and with the New Hampshire underway as this column is being written, there’s no telling who will be left standing by the time you read it.

Suffice it to say that you just don’t have any good choices. Of all those that were left standing before New Hampshire, your editor is a Gov. John Kasich man. He actually knows what a balanced federal budget looks like because he crafted the last one during the Clinton administration. With the nation’s debt now approaching twenty TRILLION dollars, it would be nice to have a budget guy.

But the reality of the situation is that the front runners – in no particular order – seem to be Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio, and for some reason former governor Jeb Bush hasn’t quit yet (as of Tuesday afternoon). What a disaster of a line up!

Trump would be a train wreck as president. I studied Ross Perot’s campaigns in college, and Trump reminds me a lot of Perot without a filter, which is saying a lot. Late night talk shows and columnists would have a lot of fodder in a Trump administration.

Jeb Bush is probably a super nice guy, but he doesn’t come off as a strong leader. He’s the guy on the beach getting sand kicked in his face in the old Charles Atlas ads. The difference is Jeb isn’t going to bulk up and kick somebody’s tail. Also, the previous Presidents Bush have been disappointments to conservatives in that both allowed the federal government’s power to explode under them.

Rubio is an attractive candidate because he looks good on TV and he has a nice backstory. But he’s just not lighting a fire under anyone.

And Ted Cruz… oh, Lord help us. First of all, if you had even one iota of a problem with Barack Obama’s nation of origin (which was either Hawaii or Kenya, depending on your source), then you should be screaming from the street corner to keep the Canadian-born Cruz out of the White House. But setting the Cruz’s birth problem aside, what has this guy ever done? He has no record of accomplishment in the senate. I can’t think of a thing he has done for Texas. And frankly, the guy has a nasally voice that no one wants to listen to for four years.

Is this really the best America can do? How have we gotten to such a sad state of affairs that literally all of our candidates – in both parties – stink to high heaven?

Maybe a miracle will happen and some unknown candidate will emerge to excite everyone, but as it is, voters in both parties may just have to hold their nose and vote for the person they dislike the least. Right now it looks like no matter who wins, we all lose.

Or maybe we’ve already lost.