In sports, the UTEP Miners were dispatched by Southern Miss with ease even in the midst of a tornado this past weekend. In the Bible, the Minor Prophets are lumped together and not given as much reverence as the major ones. In the United States of America, minors are arrested or fined if they try to drink, and everyone understands their lack of rights.
In the modern-day Republican Party, however, minor candidates for the presidential nomination somehow continue to exert a stranglehold over the policies instituted by Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus. The poor chairman has had his plans for an orderly primary season dashed not only by outsiders Ben Carson and Donald Trump, but also by the doomed campaign bids of Chris Christie, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham and Carly Fiorina.
Some of these individuals are quite powerful—sitting senators and current governors. Some of them are quite popular, as television talk show hosts or pro-life champions. None of them, however, are going to win the nomination. All of them will complain about every step of the process that leads to their inevitable loss.
Before the train wreck of a debate hosted by CNBC (whose claims that this was going to be a serious debate were trashed by the opening question involving the phrase “comic book campaign”), it was reported that the representatives of some of these campaigns were complaining that their candidates were not getting enough screen time or that the Republican Party was embarrassing them by making the second tier candidates’ debate an undercard before the main primary debate rather than allowing them to debate with the true contenders like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
What these would-be candidates apparently fail to grasp is that if they cannot crack just 1 percent in the national polls among Republican voters, they probably are not going to win over 50 percent against Hillary Clinton in a general election.
Meanwhile, also ahead of the CNBC debate, Chris LaCivita, one of Rand Paul’s advisers, posted pictures of Paul’s prep room on Twitter, comparing it unfavorably to the green rooms given to Trump and Rubio. Attaching the hashtag “#thanksRNC” to his tweets, LaCivita appeared to feel that Rand Paul had been slighted by this tiny area to prep. Again, what Paul appears to have missed is that they have done nothing to deserve a giant prep room.
Paul barely cracks 2 percent in the latest polls released and does not appear to even have a chance of winning the nomination for president (and if he keeps up his quest for it, he may lose his Senate seat as well).
In the near future, don’t be surprised if the Republican Party starts acting—either overtly or covertly—to start pulling the plugs on these minor campaigns. These candidates need to realize that they have better uses for their time and for the time of the American people than to continue these would-be presidential campaigns.
As Southern Miss demonstrated on Saturday when the Golden Eagles became bowl eligible for the first time since 2011, minors do not tend to do very well, either at The Rock or on the campaign trail.
