{"id":25122,"date":"2014-04-12T09:40:28","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T13:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25122"},"modified":"2018-01-15T17:25:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T22:25:31","slug":"charles-stross-solves-the-gops-2016-candidate-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/04\/12\/charles-stross-solves-the-gops-2016-candidate-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Stross solves the GOP’s 2016 candidate dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

No really<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Now, it occurs to me that the Republican Party over in the USA have a bit of a problem coming up in 2016, namely who to run against Barack Obama’s successor. Whoever they are. (Hilary is looking a little old<\/em> and Al’s cardboard has mildew.) But the RNC isn’t in good shape. They don’t have anybody out front with the charisma of the Gipper (dead or alive), or the good ole’ boy appeal of George W. Bush: just a bunch of old white guys in dark suits who’re obsessed with the size of their wallets and the contents of every woman’s uterus, or vice versa. Guys who make Karl Rove<\/a> look like Johnny Depp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And so it occurred to me (after my fifth pint of IPA) to spin my speculative political satire around the fact that there is only one man<\/em> on the global political scene today who has what it takes to be a plausible Republican candidate for President Of The United States at the next presidential election.<\/p>\n

This man:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Vladimir<\/p>\n

Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let me enumerate the ways in which this man makes sense as a candidate. He’s only 62 years old\u2014not as youthful as Barack Obama, but still well within the age range for POTUS. He has proven<\/em> experience of leading an aggressive, declining, former military superpower bristling with nuclear weapons and suffering from eating disorders and a tendency to binge on breakaway republics when nobody is looking. As a former KGB Colonel he understands<\/em> the needs of the security state like no US president before him, except possibly George H. W. Bush (a former Director of the CIA); he’s exactly<\/em> the right man to be in charge of the NSA, post-Snowden. As a Russian he clearly likes his tea, so he’ll go down well with that<\/em> wing of the party. Nobody can accuse him of being soft on terrorism, or communism, or gay rights. Nobody can question his virile, macho manhood either, not with his state-run press agency circulating photographs of him bareback-riding a bear. He’s an instinctive authoritarian, a daddy figure, totally in love with god, guts, and guns \u2014 and if anyone says otherwise he’ll put powdered Polonium in their soup.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, but it gets better<\/em>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No really: Now, it occurs to me that the Republican Party over in the USA have a bit of a problem coming up in 2016, namely who to run against Barack Obama’s successor. Whoever they are. (Hilary is looking a little old and Al’s cardboard has mildew.) But the RNC isn’t in good shape. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,53,1119,13],"tags":[188,517,671],"class_list":["post-25122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-politics","category-russia","category-usa","tag-electionwatch","tag-republican","tag-vladimirputin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6xc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25126,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122\/revisions\/25126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}