Unless a miracle happens, this man is the Republican nominee for president - Opinions?

[Mr Khan]

Kudistos Megistos said:

mrstickball said:

So what is your take on him?

I'm 50/50. He's a better candidate (if elected) than pretty much every other GOPer outside of Ron Paul or Gary Johnson. On the flip side....That isn't saying much. He's still a social conservative, but not quite as hard-line as others (e.g. drug policy is a state issue, not federal).

You Americans constantly confuse me.

You're lucky enough to have a political system that gives libertarians like Ron Paul a chance to shake up the dichotomy of retards vs retards, but you still vote for people who perpetuate a two party system in which both choices are anti-freedom (whatever they may say, the hard-line Republicans are just as firmly in favour of big government as the Democrats; they differ in form rather than spirit). I'd give my right arm (I'm left-handed) to have a system in which politicians like Dan Hannan had a chance of affecting how the country is run.

I've come to the conclusion that Americans actually like their false dichotomy.

That, or the system by which candidates are decided is fundamentally flawed and gives an advantage to candidates that appeal to the hard-line members of the two parties, who will generally vote for people who perpetuate the current system.

Still, it's better than the British system of "let's allow the ruling party to change the Prime Minister whenever the hell they want and not give anyone a chance to vote". This is exactly how Gordon Brown came to power; the public certainly didn't vote for him as Prime Minister.

Actually it's much the same as it is in Britain. Like when Richard Nixon resigned and we got President Gerald Ford, 100% unelected. Not that that he was a bad president, but nobody sure as hell worked to put him there

It's just that there is far far less incentive for any of our presidents to resign (basically you resign to avoid impeachment, and impeachment was only ever attempted three times out of 44 presidents), whereas in Britain a strategic shakeup of the PM makes sense because you don't want a bad PM to mess with your party's chances in the next general election or worse yet, to prompt a Vote of No Confidence. You see that more clearly in Japan, where the last man they actually voted for was Yukio Hatoyama, who resigned to make way for Naoto Kan, who has already announced his resignation, to have the second prime minister in a row selected by Party Men and not the people of Japan, and in both cases because Hatoyama and Kan had gained degrees of unpopularity that was bad for the Party