At last count there are 17 Republicans running for President of the United States. They come from at least 14 different states (depending on whether you think of Trump as being from New York, New Jersey, or Mars), they are of at least both genders, and come from a wide range of backgrounds, to put it mildly.
But my question is: why stop there?
A modest proposal: all registered Republicans should run for President.
Why should a handful (ok, two and a half handfuls) of governors, senators, former corporate executives, reality show stars, and neurosurgeons hog all the teleprompters on Fox News? Are any of these people smarter, more experienced, or more telegenic than the average Republican? Not hardly. There are only, what, a few million of you, and all you need to run is the whim and a Super-Pac.
Yes, you may need the support of some random conservative billionaire (a redundancy if ever there was one) down the road, but thanks to the Free Market System there are lots of those despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration, and once you are in the public eye money should come easily now that fictitious legal entities have the right to express their most deeply-held political views in cash.
Don’t worry that you’ve never held elective office before: neither have nearly half the people currently running, and besides, Karl Rove would love nothing more than another crack at advising Republicans about how to run their campaigns.
The benefits of all Republicans running for President should be obvious: the nation will be able to partake of your personal idiosyncratic positions on such subjects as the Mexican invasion, the sellout to Iran, the real science of climate change, the national debt to China, Socialist Security, Obamacare, open-carry laws, and whatever that thing is that died on Trump’s head.
Sound impractical? Not at all. Republicans must once again seize the cutting edge of innovation! What is Facebook, after all, but a lot of people talking about themselves to a lot of other people predisposed to agree with them? It or some website like it could be easily adapted to broadcast the views of each and every registered Republican across the Internet and around the world (assuming, of course, that Obama hasn’t already handed the Internet over to the Russians by abdicating control of the root domain registry).
Of course, you can have too much of a good thing, so we should insist that the Republicans running for President actually be registered to vote as Republicans. (Please note that this will require a recent photo ID in most of the jurisdictions where the current candidates come from.)
When it comes to televised debates, just jettison the podiums and go with town hall meetings moderated by Bret Stephens or, once he quits, Trump. Can you imagine the look on Hillary’s face, standing there alone with her Blackberry?
And where does it say that there can only be one nominee of the party for President? Not in our Constitution! Once elected, the Republican Presidents could rotate through the Oval Office individually or in small groups, or simply decide amongst themselves on someone to represent them as Republican Commander in Chief.
The First Amendment says (among other things) that the right of free speech shall not be infringed (or words to that effect)! An originalist reading of those hallowed words tells us that it’s not just your right, it’s your obligation not to abstain from the national debate!
Get out there and run, Republicans! Right, now!