Topic: Slappy Statist Candidates for US President 2016 - page 14. (Read 17936 times)

John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, may run for president. Yes, yes, he said that in 2011, and he ended up taking a pass, endorsing Mitt Romney, and sticking with his busy life of columns, Fox News appearances, and legal work in Washington. This year might be different.

"I did look at running in 2011," Bolton said in an interview before heading to Iowa for Saturdays' Citizens United-sponsored Iowa Freedom Summit. "Whatever bright idea I had 2011, I waited too long. This year, I think the summer is the outer limit for everybody, and I’m in a different position from the typical candidate in that I don't have some elective office to tend to."

Some people run for president to build a brand. Bolton, who has never won elective office, has an astoundingly durable brand already. He was just on TV this week, several times, denouncing the president for delivering the State of the Union from a "dream world." He's advised Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who may run for president (and will be on the Freedom Summit rostrum) on foreign policy. Years removed from his job in the George W. Bush administration, he launched a PAC and Super PAC in 2013 and raised an aggregated $7.5 million for Republican hawks running for office, most of whom won. That was probably helped by the fitful presidential race speculation, and Bolton insists that he may run if other Republican contenders prove unserious about foreign policy. He wouldn't, for example, say that Mitt Romney's foreign policy views had been vindicated after 2012, and that he deserved another shot at the White House.

“I don’t see myself as fulfilling the function of S&P index for other candidates,” said Bolton. “I’m concerned overall with our foreign policy. It’s a question not of a couple of grafs in a stump speech, but of a much broader and focused debate on the big picture.”

A year ago, Bolton's 2016 ambitions seemed to grow out of the Rand Paul boomlet, when the inward-looking libertarian was being called a "frontrunner." With Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney getting serious about 2016, the foreign policy landscape has changed considerably.

“I don’t think the neo-isolationism represented by Rand Paul is anything like a significant factor in the GOP as a whole," said Bolton. "But if you don’t have a debate on it, candidates who advocate that line might be better than you expect, because they’re not exposed. If they have an attractive domestic policy, people might look past their foreign policy. I think defeating this virus is important.”

Would Bolton vote for Paul if he won the nomination? "Anybody who thinks Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is better than Obama's is dreaming. I’d grit my teeth and vote for Paul.”

Bolton's prepared remarks for Saturday's summit largely focus on foreign policy. In them he warns of Ebola as a "potential biological WMD," explaining that "Russian defectors have said it was part of Moscow’s biological weapons program." When he talks about the economy, it's in the context that "a strong economy depends on [a] strong international presence."

But when pressed on why he might not want to be president, or if there was anything he disliked about the idea, Bolton insisted that he would focus on more than foreign policy. "If I run it’ll be a 360 degree candidacy," he said. "If the press—you’ll forgive me—can say 'He’s a one issue candidate,' they can dismiss me."

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I hate Rubio the most out all these.

Sen. Marco Rubio has begun taking concrete steps toward launching a presidential bid, asking his top advisors to prepare for a campaign, signing on a leading Republican fundraiser, and planning extensive travel to early-voting states in the coming weeks, ABC News has learned.

"He has told us to proceed as if he is running for president," a senior Rubio advisor tells ABC News.

Marco Rubio Insists Jeb Bush Won't Affect His 2016 Timetable
Leading the effort to raise the $50 million or more he’ll need to run in the Republican primaries will be Anna Rogers, currently the finance director for American Crossroads, the conservative group started by Karl Rove that raised more than $200 million to help elect Republicans over the past two elections.

Rogers will begin working at Rubio’s political action committee on February 1 and would become the finance director of Rubio’s presidential campaign.

Rubio, 43, will gather on Friday and Saturday at the Delano Hotel in Miami with 300 supporters and major donors to his Reclaim America PAC to discuss his political future.

Aides expect Rubio will make a final decision in the comings weeks, but his schedule for the next month already looks more like the schedule of a presidential candidate than a senator.

ABC News has learned Rubio plans to skip all votes in the Senate next week and instead take a campaign fundraising swing through California with events in Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Rancho Sante Fe and Costa Mesa. He also plans fundraising stops in Texas and Chicago.

Rubio has also scheduled a book tour that will take him to all the early primary states. A senior aide to the Florida senator tells ABC News Rubio’s book tour will include stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada. The first stop is tentatively scheduled for February 13 in Des Moines.

Jeb Bush’s Common Core problems may just be getting started.

Karl Rove has already said the former Florida governor’s support for the set of nationalized education standards will be his biggest challenge in seeking the GOP presidential nomination. His likely rival, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has predicted it will doom Bush in the primaries.

That starts in Iowa and South Carolina, where conservatives there say backlash against Common Core has become the hot-button issue among grassroots voters in their states.
"It's huge,” said Sam Clovis, an influential conservative activist in Iowa. “I think it's a disqualifier…we have pretty strong feelings out here about life and marriage, and Common Core is right up there as an issue that really energizes the base.”

Luke Byars, a South Carolina GOP strategist, called Common Core a “hornet’s nest” and “the defining issue” of the state-level elections in 2014 in the Palmetto State, predicting it will “boil over” into 2016.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday said he was seriously considering a White House bid in 2016.

"I am definitely going to look at it," Graham said on Meet the Press.

Graham said he had established a "testing the waters" committee to probe his viability in a GOP primary. The revelation comes after Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush have in recent weeks aggresively maneuvered their way into the race.