As per my last update, here’s a look at some candidates who might stand against Trump from the Republican side of the wall fence. I can’t see any of them beating Trump in a straight-up contest. This is because most of the Republican party are power-crazed scum who won’t risk a known winner against an unproven candidate. The best hope is they’ll either split the vote or whip up so much animosity to the right of the spectrum that they’ll make things easier for the Democratic candidate.

Interestingly, they mostly seem to be fiscal conservatives. I don’t know whether that’s part of their common cause against Trump but if so, it’s depressing. It’d be nice if the Republican party weren’t so far gone that some of its members objected to Trump’s plentiful and appalling crimes against behavioural standards and basic respect for humanity. But it is, so there aren’t, and we might as well start dropping the bombs now.

John Kasich

As things currently stand, Kasich has gained a bit of a reputation for wanting to stop the entire US political system becoming the laughing stock of the world. The fact this makes him stand out against his peers is one I’ll leave just here for your further consideration.

While the usual rules of existence are suspended, he’s not a far-right lunatic. Should reality suddenly reassert itself, please refer to the following waiver:

John Kasich is a raving maniac who wants to reduce re-distributive taxes while increasing regressive taxes that cause disproportionate suffering to the poor. He thinks people should be able ‘teach the controversy’ in the science classrooms of the education system he’s privatising, letting children decide (under often immense parental pressure) between whether things are best explained by facts or magic. This is presumably to bring it into line with the prison system he has already privatised, and which if he had his way would be filled with people who’ve had backstreet abortions. All this would be made possible by banning any sort of unionisation rights in the public sector, thus bringing down employment costs for unscrupulous private providers so they can submit unfeasibly cheap tenders for government contracts.

With that said, he may be the best hope the Republican party has of escaping the nightmare that is Donald Trump. Why? Because he is one the few Republicans who still has a spine. He seems to genuinely despise Trump and hasn’t been overly shy about it.

He does have cross-bench credentials on some issues, notably firearms and (weirdly, considering his other views) healthcare. This is likely only going to play well to the narrowest of the political centre though, as he fell out with the far right (not shooty or racist enough) and anyone but the most conservative of Democrats is likely to consider him a Tea Party shill. He might pick up independent and libertarian votes though, which in some states could tip the balance enough to matter.

In his favour will be brand recognition amongst Fox News viewers. This is a key Republican voting-block, so his time spent hosting his own show on the channel is likely to be a big help. Again, as with a lot of the other points here, it’s likely to have the opposite impact on potential Democrat-leaning voters because it’s comparable to having co-hosted Bestiality Today with Hitler.

He’s struck some conciliatory tones on gay marriage, voted to restrict assault rifle availability, and supports a very non-Trumpian approach to undocumented migrants. His whole political stance seems to be one of purely fiscal conservatism and very little current interest on social issues. This is likely a mild-to-moderate positive from the centrist perspective, but I suspect the negative impact it will have on the religious fruitcake vote will pretty much neutralise this gain.

One big negative to all parties will be his association with Lehman Brothers at the time of their collapse. He has somehow tried to explain that despite being Managing Director at the time of their collapse, he wasn’t aware of or involved in the events that led to it.

The challenge for Kasich boils down to one basic equation. His ability to attract some traditionally non-Republican voters isn’t great enough to offset the losses he risks amongst hardcore religious conservatives. He won’t be picking up any anti-establishment votes from either side of the fence, so this leaves him needing to find a core and enough of a swing vote to suggest he’s capable of a convincing presidential victory.

Jeff Flake

Another fiscal conservative, Flake is a bit less nuanced in terms of his appeal. He’s a straight-up conservative with very little appeal to anyone who considers themselves even vaguely Democratic-leaning.

This obviously means he doesn’t have a lot of pulling power when it comes to potential swing voters. Equally, it means he is less likely to lose the kind of religious right votes that Kasich will struggle with. In this sense, he’s more of a traditional Republican candidate.

His voting credentials include:

• Very anti-ACA (Obamacare)
• Pro-life
• Pro-gun, albeit with the caveat he thinks people who have been declared insane as part of a criminal prosecution relating to violent crime shouldn’t be able to buy guns. Because America is a country where that isn’t the default assumption.

In terms of Democrat-friendly stuff, there isn’t a whole lot. He broke from party lines to say he’d prefer a Democrat won an election than a sexual predator. But that’s only worth commenting on because the rest of the Republican party is by now so morally defunct that they wouldn’t prefer that.

He also recently insisted on an extra week before the Kavanaugh vote to allow for a further investigation. While nobody else in the party had the spine or integrity to push even this far, it does smack of symbolism rather than actual ethical commitment. He still voted for the nominee after it all, so obviously his conscience didn’t keep him up all night.

Perhaps one interesting facets of him running is he might try and slip into being the spiritual – as well as literal – successor of John McCain. It is possible we’ll hear McCain’s name invoked by any Republican resistance to Trump, so it’s plausible this may carry some weight.

Finally, two other facts that could be relevant. Flake is a Mormon and I don’t really know how that sits within the American spectrum of religious moonbattery. Secondly, he has an incredibly punchable face.

Ben Sasse

I haven’t heard much about Sasse before, so a lot of this is necessarily first-impressions-y. And those first impressions are that, by the light of unholy buggery, Ben Sasse is smart. His degrees have degrees. His PhD is in being qualified as fuck and his thesis was titled “My Brain Could Eat Your Brain: The Ben Sasse Story”.

Beyond that, it seems he is mostly a very traditional conservative; he’s very religious, he like guns, he dislikes gays, and he is mostly interested in economic growth. I’d say he’s the outsider of the group, as while he’s been a critic of Trump, he doesn’t seem to have the same level of actual hatred of the man as the others we’ve looked at. As someone with a brain, he despairs that his country is being run by someone who largely goes without one.

But, that said, I’m not very sure what else it is Sasse finds so disagreeable about Trump. So, he’s a fiscal conservative with good religious credentials, but probably too ivory tower to win votes from Trump’s base and definitely too Republican to get any of the waving Democrat vote. In fact, I can’t help but wonder whether his ire is based on the fact that the views of an obvious moron are consistently similar to his own.

One last thing I do want to mention is that he seems to have some weird views. He’s an anti-consumerist fiscal conservative who seems to think the economy will boom if everyone lives by a puritanical work-for-work’s-sake creed. What these people then spend their money on or what motivates them to earn it, I’m not entirely sure. It sounds a lot like working yourself to death for no gain, just to die rich and leave your money to kids who will do the same damned stupid thing.