In the next few days I’ll rate the 8 leading GOP candidates for the 2016 Nomination as reported by RealClearPolitics on 6 August 2015. I will rate four criteria; potential to change our nation, electability, personal integrity, and past performance. I will score them from 0 to 3. The ratings will be color-coded as follows.

Blue = Excellent (3 pts) – Implies candidate is solidly better than most of the GOP and all of the Dems.
Green = Good (2 pts) – Implies candidate is better than GOP average and probably all Dems.
Yellow = Low Pass (1 pt) – Candidate is on the low end of the GOP and is not impressive.
Red = Terrible (0 pts) – Denotes a very nice person who does not need to serve as POTUS.

I begin with Donald Trump. I rate Mr. Trump as Red. THE DONALD tells us that Kelo vs. New London was a great USSC decision. This decision allowed a municipality to confiscate a woman’s house so that they could sell the land to a shopping mall developer. If this strikes THE DONALD as good law, I can only wonder whether his instincts towards socialism are national or international. He is now claiming to have “evolved” on any hot-button issue that pops up so he can get attention from the rubes. This reality show will end badly. Let’s get it over with. Rotting fish don’t start smelling better with age.

I’m rating Jeb Bush as Red. He contacted Bill Clinton with great concern over THE DONALD, and was assured by that paragon virtue that the Trump thing would get taken care of. Jeb also shares a similar donor pool with Hillary Clinton. People who invest in candidates pretty much invest in them for the purchase of similar policies once they have been elected. Outside of gender, I’m having a really hard time telling Heb and Jillary apart.

Scott Walker rates below Blue here for the first time since I’ve evaluated him. He has guts, communicates well, and has stood by his new immigration view when vociferously challenged. But I feel like he’s running further to the right than where he has governed in order to woo social conservatives in Iowa. Has he sincerely changed his view on granting illegal aliens amnesty? I hope so, but I can’t keep him at Blue while I rip into Donald Trump for the same practice. Scott Walker gets a Green (just barely).

Mike Huckabee polls 4th. I rate him a Blue on Personal Integrity. I disagree with a lot, and I mean a lot of what Mike Huckabee would do as POTUS. However, I’ve never felt the need to ask myself what the man really meant. When he asked about President Obama’s Kenyan upbringing, he unfortunately wasn’t just kidding. The rating scale here is honesty, not an axis of the DSM. He maxes.

Ben Carson could do stand-up when the politics fails to work out for him. I find him amusing and humor usually involves a novel and interesting way of telling people truth they would rather not hear. I’d enjoy having a beer with the guy even against Doctor’s Orders. Decent man, likeable guy, not knowledgeable enough about politics to craft a dominant, winning campaign. I like the fact that he issued an unequivocal and checkable statement in response to the accusation that some of his medical research involved fetal tissue. Pray this fetal tissue did not come from anyone’s abortion. Pray for Ben Carson’s soul if it did. I give him a Green on honesty because he hasn’t tried to deny or run away from the past.

[mc_name name=’Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001098′ ] hates liars. I almost thought he was going to eat [mc_name name=’Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’M000355′ ]’s spleen live on YouTube a couple of months ago. I would have passed him the Tobasco Sauce. You could see the genuine resentment radiate off the man and form a physical force field. Ted Cruz has no time for liars, charlatans and fools. He gets an unblemished Blue.

If you ever feel of sick of the nasty, overbearing and conceited bureaucracy that is a hallmark of Barack Obama’s tenure in office, [mc_name name=’Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’R000595′ ] may well be your GOP candidate. He wins the “I’m not King Richard” Award in the current GOP field. He also has a disturbing tendency to be polite to audiences and just tell them what they want to hear instead of what he really believes. I’d get after Rubio more on core GOP issues, but I can’t criticize a target that moves every time he is front of a different audience. I don’t think he is genuinely lying to flense me. He’s usually engaged in polite and urbane fibbing to avoid giving personal offense. He is a genuinely nice man, but may be too nice and too concerned about giving offense to tell the hard truths that America needs to hear. I rate him a Yellow. It would go higher if he just told me what he really felt about things.

The last candidate rated is the Great Libertarian Hope, [mc_name name=’Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’P000603′ ]. Senator Paul is sometimes hard to pin down. I think he tries to be honest, but will shade parts of his message to appeal to electoral audiences. He’s not as gelatinous as Rubio can be, but I think he has pandered some on foreign policy to avoid being termed a Dove or a Wimp. I rate him a light Green with Yellow tinges. He has selected an issue to pander on for the sake of electoral viability.

This concludes part 3 out of 4. In my previous edition of the series I discussed electability. Next I discuss past performance.