Regarding Rand Paul

[malthaussen]

15. Fortunately, Hillary remains well ahead of all rivals...

... but we're a long way from 2016, and she is still only a "theoretical" candidate (in about the same way as gravity is a theory).

I'm no lover of Hillary, but I always view elections in terms of damage control first. That old "she's better than the alternative" rears its head once again. This would be true no matter whom the GOP nominated, since there is no one in that party who can be taken seriously as a human being, however seriously he might be taken as a candidate.

Rand Paul is a particularly dangerous-looking viper because, as you say, the low-information voters are going to go by cosmetics and irrelevancies and not care about substance. But if the voters cared about substance, our choices in elections would look very different indeed.

I'm pretty much in "sufficient to the day" mode, right now. The Presidential race has hardly begun. I figure whoever announces will get an immediate boost just by virtue of announcing, but when the ballots are counted, we'll end up with the establishment candidate as usual. Remember in 2012 that virtually every GOP candidate was leading the polls at some point. Every week was turmoil over the next fool in the driver's seat, but in the end Romney was nominated without much difficulty. I expect much the same thing will happen now, but as I opined when Cruz announced his candidacy, one must never take anything for granted.

-- Mal