I was somewhat alarmed to read this morning the news that Donald Trump is the front-runner in the race for nomination to lead the Republican Party in the next US presidential election. As things stand he has about twice the number of votes of his nearest rival. He is not enjoying the kind of dominance that Hillary Clinton has as candidate for the rival Democratic Party; she currently has around 42% of the party’s vote with her nearest rival on about 11%, but it is still impressive. It is also rather hard to understand given some of the views he has expressed. In recent weeks he has suggested that most Mexican immigrants to the US are criminals and just this week he has questioned the integrity of a fellow Republican politician who was captured and tortured during his military service. The latter outburst may well cost him a lot of support; veteran soldiers are held in high regard in the US, especially by members of the Republican party. And in the last few hours he has given out the personal mobile phone number of one of his competitors during a public speech. As one commenter put it, “Donald Trump continues to show hourly that he is ill-prepared to be commander in chief.”
Donald Trump’s political views might also seem a little worrying if he is to end up as the most powerful man in the world. From an outsider’s point of view, that Donald Trump describes Global Warming as a hoax is of grave concern. He has not mentioned the issue (as far as I can discover) since announcing his candidacy on the 16th June this year but his Twitter stream (dating back some years) has regular mentions of the issue:
Donald J Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!
Donald J Trump
@realDonaldTrump
It’s snowing & freezing in NYC. What the hell ever happened to global warming?
Donald J Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
Global Warming is not the only thing that matters, but an unwillingness to consider the evidence involved in an issue when it works against self interest is not a very attractive feature in any leader. Especially when that leader is effectively the leader of the free world. Not that his fellow hopeful candidates (of which there are a huge number) are necessarily a much more attractive proposition. At the risk of cherry-picking for entertainment value, here are a few of the views of some of the other Republican candidates.
Scott Walker (currently second in the polls)
“I needed to be certain that running was God’s calling – not just man’s calling. I am certain: This is God’s plan for me and I am humbled to be a candidate for President of the United States.”
Oh lawks! He is getting prompting from outside – which is also inside – his head. Please give us a leader who is making the decisions himself. Jeb Bush has similar support levels to Scott Walker and also describes himself as very conservative, but he does seem to be tempering some of his more extreme views. He is still very hot on the death penalty and wants to cut the number of appeals that convicts on death row are allowed to have. He wants to speed up the process of putting people to death, which is presently much more expensive than putting them in prison for life.
Mike Huckabee (in response to the question, “Do you believe in Evolution?”)
I believe there is a God who was active in the creation process. Now, how did he do it, and when did he do it, and how long did he take? I don’t honestly know, and I don’t think knowing that would make me a better or a worse president… if anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it – I don’t know how far they will march that back…
There is nothing wrong with believing in God and accepting Evolution (the Pope manages it after all) but Mr Huckabee is factually wrong if he doubts that we are descended from primates. We are descended from them because we are primates, by definition of the word primate. You are a primate and your parents, from whom you are descended, are also primates. (I also happen to be descended from an archbishop, if you read the other definition of primate, but I accept that Mr Huckabee may not be!)
Rick Perry
He has called climate science a contrived, phoney mess. He is opposed to a woman’s right to choose over abortion, opposed to same-sex relationships, in favour of US torture methods to extract information from terror suspects and seems to be quite a big fan of the death penalty (including blocking an attempt to ban the execution of mentally retarded inmates).
Unfortunately, going through the list, even some of the relatively sane candidates (such as Rand Paul) are greatly hampered by having to keep their religious supporters happy. Candidates who are all about small government, with no desire to interfere with people’s rights to carry guns or pay very little tax, have nonetheless to declare that where God has strong views they definitely agree.
Hillary Clinton is currently the main Democratic Party candidate and she tends to hold views that will sound more familiar to UK/European ears. She likes nationalised health care; is in favour of making rich people pay more tax than poor people; she wants to promote alternative energy and reduce CO2 emissions; she favours gun control; and she was once quoted as saying “I don’t think [..the..] debate should be about ideology, it should be about facts and evidence.” But it is not that simple; she has her baggage too. As an example, take this quotation from (one of my heroes) Christopher Hitchens in a 2008 article…
Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband’s help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut.
It is an excellent, short article and I recommend you read it if you want to hear how he came to the conclusion above. I think that this is going to shape up to be a very interesting campaign. First as the two parties present their main hopefuls, secondly as they then whittle these down through a series of debates to two opposing presidential & vice-presidential candidates, and finally as the two parties go head to head in the election itself. And the outcome really matters for the futures of us all so let’s hope that the process produces somebody worthy of the position.
p.s. Since I have given US politics a bit of a sledging, I will try to redress the balance by having a go at a British Conservative MP, who really irks me, next time!
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