The 2008 candidates for President

I've been meaning to get back to this all month, and now the month's almost over. Dang!

For starters, here's a link to the New York Times' listing of the candidates: Election Guide 2008 - Presidential Election

That link provides a list of candidates, along with brief bios and other info.

I had planned on discussing each candidate separately over the course of the month, but as I did the research, I noticed that there just isn't a whole lot of difference among them. We all know that the Democratic candidate is going to be largely left wing and that the GOP candidate is largely going to be right wing, so discussions of the differences among the individual candidates is, in truth, irrelevant. In other words, with the Dem candidate, you're getting someone who's pro-choice and who largely believes in a collectivist philosophy when it comes to the role of the government, regardless of whether you pick Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards.

You might as well be picking among the jacks in a deck of cards, because no matter which one you pick, it's going to be a jack. So really, what's the point of having this very early start to the campaigns, and what's the point of all these debates? And while we're at it, why are some of the early primary states so concerned over which one of them holds their primaries first? We know what we're basically getting, so why go through all that? Just pick one of those Dems and run with it. Same with the GOP candidates.

The only one that has sparked something of an interest for me is Ron Paul. I'm going to do more research on him, and he'll be the only candidate that I'll discuss separately later in the week. However, pretty much I'm very likely to vote for a 3rd party candidate for the very first time ever - so unimpressed am I with the current slate of candidates. Paul is something of an oddball when it comes to his views as compared to both his party's views as well as compared with the views of the Dems. You'll see later what I mean.