Two more clowns jump off the bus

Today two more Republican Clowns Candidates jumped off the Republican Clown Bus and ended their campaigns for the Republican nomination for president. Neither one surprised anyone by quitting.

The first two stumble off the bus was Cara Carleton Sneed “Carly” Fiorina, who quit in the early afternoon, US time. She was always a longshot, and never connected with Republican voters. Her main notable things from the campaign were her debate performances, however, most of those were in the “kids’ table” debates outside of prime time.

As MSNBC put it, Fiorina “routinely made declarative statements that would later turn out to be untrue.” This called her credibility into question. However, the fact that she continued to champion those faked Planned Parenthood videos, including talking about a scene that didn’t even exist, and continued to spread the nonsense even after it was shown they were lies, that called into question her integrity. And, for being touted as Republicans’ solution to the party’s “war on women”, she was pretty much a willing participant in that war, an anti-women candidate just like all the boys.

Later that evening, Christopher James “Chris” Christie became the next quitter, a move that was expected. Like the other lower-tier candidates, he just failed to fire. Many Republicans hated him because he’d said nice things about President Obama, and he wasn’t a religious extremist, which made him one of the very few that was true of. He probably never stood a chance.

The New Hampshire results show that Fiorina only got 4.1% of the vote, and Christie got 7.4%. That placed him at sixth and her at seventh, meaning they’d be out of the next Republican debate, and so, had little chance to improve their poll ratings. This means that quitting made a lot of sense.

But here’s a burning question: Why the hell is Ben Carson still in the race? He got 2.3% of the vote in New Hampshire, and is out of the next debate, too. What does he think is going to suddenly change?

Carson’s 2.3% places him so low that the other candidates will have to be careful they don’t trip over him lying on the floor. But—what about Jim Gilmore?! He was bunched with all the other nobodies still in the race, all of whom had dropped out or are truly fringe candidates, collectively getting an embarrassing 1.8% of the vote. So, what’s HE waiting for? Carson may be hoping for a divine miracle to save his campaign, but Gilmore? I doubt even that would be enough.

After the most recent departures from the Republican Clown Bus, there are still seven clowns aboard, though clearly if they had any sense Carson and Gilmore would quit, too. But, it doesn’t matter: They’re all terrible, of course. But the worst thing, in my opinion, is that Jeb! (just don’t say) Bush is the least-worst of the remaining lot. Considering how awful and loathed he is, that’s an incredibly sorry state of affairs.

As of today, there’s still 8 months, 29 days until the US presidential election.

Update February 12, 2016: Yahoo News’ Bianna Golodryga interviewed Ben Carson, who said about South Carolina: “Everybody wants to always call the game after the second or third inning. I say let the game play out. Things happen during campaigns, historically, so why call it after the third inning? If we’re going to do that, we should just end it right now.” Clearly. I think he should “end it right now”, but he says that if, as is fairly certain, he does badly in South Carolina, “I will always continue to assess the situation, but right now my goal is to present the alternative.” Right. Given how badly he’s performed, one has to ask: Alternative to what?