Republican presidential scorecard: Primary election edition
Photo credit to slate.com
By Isabel Gibson Penrose, Opinions Editor
The Pennsylvania primary is less than two weeks away. Who are you going to vote for? Check out these completely arbitrary scores of the Republican candidates to make up your mind!
John Kasich
Many people have bestowed the moniker of “moderate” on John Kasich. He has acknowledged the existence of climate change, considered the option of adapting Common Core education standards, expanded Medicaid and is even potentially open to immigration reform. +130,000 points.
But lemme tell you, folks, those things are not enough. Kasich is not moderate. He is an extreme conservative in moderate’s clothing. Kasich has cut funding for public education (half a billion dollars in Ohio) and taxes for the rich, frozen Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards for two years and failed the deliver on his promise to create jobs (he would need to create 213,000 jobs to get Ohio back to where it was pre-recession). -213,000 points.
Despite his groundbreaking stance that he would still love his daughter if she were a lesbian (“If one of my daughters happened to be that [gay] of course I would love them, and I would accept them,” Kasich, August 6, 2014) Kasich is no friend to the LGBT community. Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that eventually made marriage equality the law of the land, was originally Overgefell v. Kasich – because Kasich was the governor of the state that would not recognize the marriage of a male widower and his partner who had recently passed away. -62,014 points.
Additionally, he defunded Planned Parenthood and has enacted 16 anti-abortion measures since taking office in 2011. He signed bills placing a gag order on rape crisis counselors thereby preventing them from talking to rape survivors about abortion and banning abortions on pregnancies over 20 weeks. -1,300,000 points, one for every dollar he cut from Planned Parenthood.
Kasich has said there is “zero chance” he would accept the spot as Donald Trump’s vice president. +0 points, because this should be obvious.
Just because Kasich has the basic human decency to not insult his opponents like a third grader doesn’t mean he would be a good president. -100,000 points.
Total = -1,545,014 points
Ted Cruz
Nobody likes Cruz. John Boehner, George W. Bush and everyone who worked on the 2000 Bush campaign, his Princeton roommate Craig Mazin (“I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United Sates. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book,” Mazin said in 2013.) as well as his Harvard Law School classmates, the Supreme Court clerks he worked with while clerking for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and his Senate colleagues have all gone on the record with stories of extreme dislike. I know being likedisn’t everything but when someone leaves a trail of hatred wherever they go, pay attention. -200,000 points.
Cruz is a very intense ideologue with deep seeded hatred and distrust of the government. He does not believe in climate change or the separation of church and state, referred to the day marriage equality became legal as “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history,” and wants to repeal The Affordable Care Act (which he is insured under, by the way) and dismantle the Internal Revenue Service. +500,000 points, for consistency.
In response to Donald Trump’s now infamous remarks about punishing women who get abortions Cruz issued this statement on his Facebook page – “We shouldn’t be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world.” Cruz is against all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. These days I guess forcing women to give up their rights is the same as affirming their dignity? -600,000 points.
Let’s please not forget that the government shutdown of 2013 was mostly caused by Cruz throwing a fit about The Affordable Care Act and refusing to compromise with Senate Democrats. Imagine someone that unwilling to compromise sitting in the White House. It’s chilling. -300,000 points.
He’s the Zodiac Killer. +10,000 points, because this definitely makes him more sympathetic.
Total = -590,000 points
Donald Trump
Trump is at the end of the scorecard because I genuinely do not want to write about him. He is racist, misogynistic, arrogant, greedy, idiotic, and generally the worst. He is also the current Republican frontrunner, which is an embarrassment for the GOP and for America as a whole.
Nobody vote for this guy, please. Seriously. Nobody – infinity points.
Total = -infinity points
