The Worst News for Democrats in 2016

The following quotation by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy [R-CA] is from an article in the November 20, 2013,  Washington Post entitled, "Republican elders increasingly view members of Congress as too tainted."

"I don’t think anyone should become president if they haven’t been a governor first..." 

Read the full text of the article.

This is the worst possible news for the Democrats the the 2016 presidential election and the best possible news for Republicans.  Republicans have figured out history, they've read history, and they've finally come to understand that the most qualified people to be president of United States are governors, not senators. 

If the Democrats can't find a governor who's capable of winning the presidential election, they can say goodbye to the White House in 2016, because there's no better proof of how bad senators can be  as presidents than the current ocupant of the Oval Office who, to quote a golf metaphor by the immortal Pearl Bailey, "does a whole lot of swinging, but ain't got no follow-through."

The truth is that the Republicans already had the right idea in the 2012 election. Mitt Romney was a carpetbagger Republican from Michigan who succeeded in getting elected governor in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the most Democratic state in the Union, whereupon he successfully implemented socialized medicine for all its citizens. 

Romney lost the presidential election not because he had been a bad governor but because he flaunted his elitism, didn't pay his taxes, betrayed his country by stashing millions of dollars in the Cayman Islands and--most important of all--although he wanted to be president, he didn't really believe he could win the election.

If the Republicans nominate a successful governor for president in 2016, their candidate wipe the floor with Hillary Clinton, who's been the media darling since she was first elected junior senator from the state of New York and who is notoriously unqualified for the job of president of United States.

It is astonishing that so many people believe that just because Hillary Clinton flew all over the world and has the stamps of 112 countries in her passport she is therefore qualified to be President of the United States. Rather it makes her qualified for elite status in a  frequent-flier club.  Or, as an John Cassidy put it somewhat more kindly in the pages of The New Yorker, "Hillary Clinton was a great ambassador, not a great Secretary of State."

But it doesn't have to be as bad as the Democrats might think. Governors, whether Republicans or Democrats, have to be realists. That means that unlike the ignorant and fanatic teabagger ideologues strangling the Congress,  they have to know how to compromise. 

So a good, successful Republican governor--and I'm excluding the current media darling Chris Christie of New Jersey who, in addition to his record making him vulnerabe to attacks by the Democrats, should be staggering to the nearest WeightWatchers instead of running for the White House--could easily become a very successful president.  

I'd suggest someone like Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico who, if elected, would not only be the first woman president, but the first Hispanic/Latina president as well.  With her, the Republicans could capture two birds at once.

After all, there have been a few good Republican presidents, among them Abraham Lincoln,who freed the slaves and saved the nation, and Theodore Roosevelt, who busted the trusts and punished the plutocrats, to name just two.