Never in American history has one party presented 15 serious candidates for a presidential nomination. The Republican party is not doing so today.
It is against the interest of both the GOP and the country to extend a useless multiplicity of candidacies. Instead of dropping off one-by-one like rusty tail-pipes and tire fragments falling off along a highway, some of these respectable but hopeless Republican candidates should consider resigning collectively in a way that would make a positive difference to the country, and act as a credit to them individually.
These failing candidates are becoming a distracting embarrassment both to the individuals offering themselves and to their supporters and party. They are diluting the national impact of the Republican campaign, wasting precious financial and staff resources, and diverting the media and the public from the critical essence of the campaign.
What voter will be impressed with either our national political process, the GOP, or with the hopeless candidates themselves if these men collapse painfully one-by-one as the polls, the public and unpaid staffs humiliate them? Instead, they could enhance their own reputations and the GOP, and improve the chance for a better result by quitting as a group, making an intelligent and patriotic statement as they do so. These potential withdrawal candidates know who they are. They know they will not be our next president. (The preliminary list might include Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, and George Pataki.)
Consider the impact if five, six or hopefully more Republican candidates, standing together at some significant national site, collectively address the media and America, and together present a statement something like this:
“As individual candidates, we may not agree on the details of policy or on the best candidate for our party’s nomination. But we all know that our country requires a dramatic change of leadership, and we are stepping aside to facilitate this process and to put our country first.”
Robert Kennedy’s 1968 New York State campaign manager and a former publisher of The Village Voice, Bartle Bull’s novel The White Rhino Hotel is under contract for a television mini-series.
