05-19-2019, 10:23 PM
For #2, I was awaiting the announcement of anyone with significant achievement in public life (especially being a current or former Governor or US Senator or cabinet secretary, but even a current Congressional representative, big-city mayor, or military hero) who is not preposterously old (let us say Bob Dole). Weld was Governor of a State whose governorship Republicans rarely win.
The point is 'significant'. Thus a joke such as the deceased Harold Stassen as a candidate for the Republican nomination for the Presidency does not qualify. The current list of serious candidates on the Democratic side includes a mayor of a moderate-sized city (Pete Buttegieg, South Bend); should a Republican mayor of a city of similar size run against Donald Trump I would have to include him. It's hard to think of any war heroes who would run as Republicans.
If the intra-party challenger is some other rich plutocrat, then because that person has the same qualification as Trump before running for President, he would have to be added.
The point is 'significant'. Thus a joke such as the deceased Harold Stassen as a candidate for the Republican nomination for the Presidency does not qualify. The current list of serious candidates on the Democratic side includes a mayor of a moderate-sized city (Pete Buttegieg, South Bend); should a Republican mayor of a city of similar size run against Donald Trump I would have to include him. It's hard to think of any war heroes who would run as Republicans.
If the intra-party challenger is some other rich plutocrat, then because that person has the same qualification as Trump before running for President, he would have to be added.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.