Since we're being succint:

 

Trump and Fiorina are the golden children of the press right now. I think we'll see a lot of time and page space dedicated to those two bickering back and forth over the next few months.

 

Trump's plan for diplomacy is to be close, personal friends with every world leader. Fiorina's is to personally nuke every world leader. Both are misguided.

 

Christie's entire campaign seems to be, "America will be better with me in charge because I was there on 9/11." I'm not impressed.

 

Rubio has some good ideas, but he has a lot of bad ones, too.

 

The more I see from Kasich, the more I believe he's a remarkably moderate candidate. That, of course, means that he doesn't stand a chance.

 

I still think Bush will be a slow burn of a candidate who goes off close to the convention, once other candidates start dropping out.

 

Walker is done. Is it just me, or does it look like he's constantly stoned?

 

Now that the world is taking Donald Trump seriously, Huckabee will be urged to stay in it at least until the next debate for comic relief.

 

Cruz remains a Canadian idiot, and it was very refreshing to see virtually everyone else on the debate panel essentially call him one over his blabbering about shutting down the government to block Planned Parenthood funding (a move that, as those with multiple functioning brain cells onstage pointed out, would all but hand Democrats the election), and on his "tear up the treaty" garbage. Cruz is a demagogue, and he'll continue to be marginalized and pushed out of the election as Americans see that the man is either making it up as he goes along or functionally insane. I initially thought that Cruz would be at the convention as one of the final two or three. Now, I think he'll be lucky to survive Super Tuesday, and I'm not shedding any tears over that.

 

Carson continues to impress me with how brilliant and well-spoken he is, but occasionally he'll say something about Earth being 6,000 years old, or how we should use military drones to bomb ourselves in the name of immigration reform. I want to like him because I think he's very moderate on some issues, but he just keeps alienating me.

 

Paul remains my front-runner. It seems that he's finally settled in on a way to differentiate himself from the pack, and that's by emphasizing how pro-liberty he is. Honestly, that's the biggest reason, by far, that I'm behind Paul as opposed to someone like O'Malley (is he still running?). The total loss of privacy and civil liberties in the name of "national security" is a joke, and if we don't fix it now, we will have destroyed America. How that message isn't resonating with more people is beyond me, although the establishment culture (on both sides) of, "If you see something, say something," may well have poisoned Americans into accepting massive government intrusion into their daily lives, warrantless searches of their person, property and electronic records and, ultimately imprisonment of "suspected terrorists" whose only crime is disagreeing with government actions and daring to speak their mind. Rand Paul is the only candidate on both sides that, I believe, would do anything significant to change the path by dismantling the DHS, ending NSA domestic espionage operations and ending TSA stupidity--which is no longer restricted to airports. TSA clowns can now be found at train stations, bus depots, even conducting random, warrantless "inspections" on freeways.

 

But, yeah, I digress, and now you guys know more about what really drives my motivations than anything else.

 

Side note as it relates to the JV debate: Bobby Jindal has lost it, and Lindsey Graham was surprisingly impressive last night. Too bad his campaign is already far beyond saving.

---