A Wolf at the Door

By Michael O. Varhola

Recently, I received a mailing from the campaign of Congressman Frank Wolf asking me for my support and making the case for why I should do so. In this double-sided sheet that concludes with his signature, Wolf explains to me that "due to the once in a decade process of congressional redistricting," I now live in a different district, and then talks about the issues he is devoted to.

And Wolf makes an irreproachable case! His platform is, in fact, so generic and "common sense" that it would be hard to take exception to it. The bulleted items on his mailing include the following:

* "Get the Federal Budget Under Control"

* "Create Jobs and Help Business"

* "Get the Federal Budget Under Control"

* "Improve our Region's Transportation System"

* "Improve Education"

* "Protect Our Neighborhoods and Communities

Good stuff. Nothing there on social issues, but I would have to be a communist, a homosexual agitating to get married, a rape victim trying to dump a fetus, or some other undesirable to object to an inoffensive laundry list like that. And no matter what my own political leanings might be, I can't take offense at Wolf's party affiliation, because he opts not to include it in his mailing! Not even an examination of his campaign website, in fact, explicitly reveals whether he is a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or something else altogether -- although it does note that he has represented his district since 1981.

It would seem, in the current polarized political landscape, that the canny congressman believes he would repulse more people than he would attract by revealing this bit of information about himself. A sly Wolf indeed.

A little digging through third-party sources reveals that Wolf is, in fact, a Republican, but apparently not one of the more rabid members of that pack, and therefore quite possibly the kind of person I would want to vote for. As much as I might want to, however, I cannot support Wolf, for reasons beyond my control that I will reveal presently. I can, however, do him a favor -- and, perhaps more importantly, help out his profligate and inefficient staffers and any voters who may have given their hard-earned money to him.

In short, I cannot vote for Frank Wolf because he represents the 10th Congressional District of Virginia -- and I live in Texas. Yes, that is correct, I have been a resident of the Lone Star State for the past three-and-a-half years, but despite that staffers for Wolf's campaign nonetheless deem it appropriate to use the resources at their disposal to mail information to me about their candidate.

I have no idea how much money the Wolf campaign will save if this article prompts them to examine their mailing lists and purge the addresses of people ineligible to actually vote for their candidate, but I suspect it is more than any contribution I could afford to make would be worth. Maybe, as thanks for helping them out the way that I have, they will be kind enough to let me know.

America's Allied Wounded Warriors

By Michael O. Varhola

As a journalist, I have always been aware that the United States was not alone in the ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Knowing that in theory, however, does not necessarily make one think about the non-American troops that are not just serving alongside U.S. military personnel, but being killed and maimed like them as well. I was exposed to this largely unknown phenomena and gained some insights into it when I visited the Czech Republic in July. Since then, I have been moved to begin writing a book on the subject with the working title Allied Soldier and to begin telling the story of the things I saw and the people I met. (Shown here is a Czech soldier guarding the presidential palace in Prague.)

There are, in fact, currently more than two-dozen nations serving with the United States in Afghanistan, including Great Britain, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic. This is, moreover, the first time the Czech Republic has been involved in hostilities since World War II and it faces many obstacles to providing adequate support for its soldiers severely injured as a result. One of these hurdles is that many of the nation's citizens do not understand the value of supporting either the war in Southwest Asia or the veterans wounded in it. Another is that the Czech government does not have either the resources or the breadth of experience of larger, wealthier nations like the United States, which can draw upon the lessons it has learned in the many conflicts with which it has been involved over the past six decades.

Two years ago, a number of concerned Czech citizens founded REGI Base Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing critical resources and support for wounded warriors that goes beyond what either the government or their families are able to do. Its centerpiece will be REGI Base I, a state-of-the-art medical facility currently under construction outside of Prague in the village of Svémyslice that, when it is completed, will be able to house up to 16 veterans undergoing treatment and serve the needs of up to 35 outpatients per day (the facility is shown here as it appeared during my visit). The intent of its founders is that it will include modern diagnostic equipment unavailable anywhere else in the region, be able to provide rehabilitative care onsite, and serve as a clearinghouse of information on physicians and clinics worldwide to which it can send wounded warriors in need of specialized care.

Inspiration for both the name of REGI Base and its mission is Chief Warrant Officer Jiří "Regi" Schams, a Czech special forces soldier who was horribly wounded on March 17, 2008 (shown here shortly before his injury). On that day, he was part of a 13-person multinational team that was conducting outreach operations to the civilian residents of a particularly dangerous province of Afghanistan when it was attacked by a suicide bomber. Four of the other personnel in the squad were killed outright, including two Danish civil affairs soldiers and the group's Afghani interpreter, and nine were wounded, including Schams, who was incapacitated by the blast. It initially appeared as if he had suffered some relatively minor injuries and a concussion. Before long, however, it became apparent that a piece of shrapnel had entered the back of Schams' head and burrowed its way through his brain almost to the front of his skull.

At first, there did not appear to be much chance that Schams would survive. But to the surprise of everyone — including his doctors and his family — the phenomenally tough special operations soldier managed to stabilize and pull through. That brought its own host of problems, however, for the injured veteran, who suffered extreme neurological damage and was thereby confined to a wheelchair, initially unable to speak, and plagued with vision problems that force him to perpetually keep one eye closed.

Following his return to the Czech Republic, Schams received the best medical care that his government could provide, and enjoyed the attention and support of his former comrades-in-arms and family members, particularly his mother. But resources available to him were inadequate for dealing with his condition, and his recovery was slow and very limited; for the first two years after he was injured, Schams believed he was in the middle of a nightmare from which he would eventually awake, something that severely retarded his progress.

In 2010, a Czech entrepreneur named Hynek Čech met Schams through a mutual friend and was horrified to discover that the wounded warrior was living alone in a high-rise apartment building that he could not even exit on his own (Schams is shown here with REGI Base co-founder Hynek Čech, right, and Kent Wills, author of a story about the wounded veteran titled a "A Soldier for Life").). His situation improved a little when friends would visit or take him somewhere, when he would stay with his mother on the other side of town, or when he would go for an annual two-week course of therapy at a nearby military hospital, but was still far from ideal. At both his and his mother's apartments, for example, the elevators are barely large enough to accommodate a wheelchair and can only be accessed via flights of steps — making it difficult for him to come and go even if someone is helping him. He also has trouble using the toilet or bathing without assistance.

Čech began looking into what could be done on behalf of Schams and other wounded warriors and soon came to the conclusion that the only thing that would work is a completely new, private organization that both supplemented the available treatment and services and went beyond them. It was this realization that prompted him to help conceive of and become one of the co-founders of the REGI Base Foundation.

One of the very first thing the fledgling organization did was to take Schams to a special neurologic clinic in the Black Sea city of Odessa, in the Ukraine, so that he could be tested by a top specialist in brain injuries (that doctor had, ironically, served in a Soviet military field hospital in Afghanistan from 1982-84, during that nation's ill-fated occupation of the country). After being examined and receiving additional CAT scans, the medical staff at the facility recommended that Schams be sent to a military rehabilitation center in the Ukrainian city of Saky. He spent six weeks at the facility and, as a result of the treatment he received there, his speech improved significantly.

That was the limit of what could be accomplished for Schams in either the Czech Republic or the Ukraine, however, and the staff of REGI Base realized they needed something better. So, in January 2012, Čech traveled to TIRR Memorial Herman in Houston, Texas (shown here), where a dozen Romanian soldiers had recently received treatment for traumatic brain injuries, and the costs for this had apparently been covered by the U.S. government. The best that hospital representatives were willing to do, however, was to give REGI Base a quote of nearly a half-million dollars to treat Schams — something that closed the door on help for this allied soldier.

Despite this frustrating setback, REGI Base has continued to move ahead in its attempts to provide help for both Schams and other critically-injured soldiers.

“Our fundamental idea is to create a unique complex that will combine rehabilitation, accommodation, and 24-hour assistance for soldiers who have returned from overseas missions but who cannot be adequately cared for by their families or friends," said Čech (shown here at his office in Prague). "Our first priority is to provide 365-day-a-year service to soldiers who cannot be fully treated at home or by the government. The Czech Republic currently has more than 500 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and, as something tragic can happen at any time, we need to be ready to provide special care when it is needed.”

Čech also emphasized that, once it is established, it is his intent that the facility will serve as a regional rehabilitation center that serves the needs not just of military personnel from the Czech Republic but other nations as well, including the United States and other NATO nations. Ultimately, he said he would like REGI Base to have branches worldwide and to established reciprocal agreements that would allow military personnel to receive the treatment most appropriate to them at facilities in any of the participating nations. And going beyond medical care, Čech is also actively lobbying in his country for legislation that would help provide jobs for discharged Czech veterans and working on a project to provide special insurance benefits to them.

During my visit to the Czech Republic, I met with Schams and his mother; Čech and his staff; Schams former commander, Major Pavel Ruzicka, currently second-in-command of the Czech military police corps; Special Operations Group members who served with Schams (most of whom cannot be mentioned by name or photographed because they are still on active duty and involved in classified operations), and Deputy Minister of Defense Michael Hrbata (who appears with me here in his office at the Ministry of Defense). Hrbata in particular has been a champion of REGI Base, as has his boss, Defense Minister Alexandr Vondra — who gave the initial "green light" for the veterans organization — and the two of them have done everything in their power to garner support for it from the government and amongst the Czech people.

What really struck me during my visit, in fact, was how everyone concerned was doing everything in their power to help Jiří Schams and soldiers in a similar situation, but how so much more was needed (Schams is shown below as he appears today). REGI Base has got a handle on what those additional measures are, and when I visited the site of the clinic under construction and heard about all the great things the foundation wants to do, my response was, "Let's get this done! What do you need?"

As with almost anything big and complicated in the modern world, of course, what REGI Base needs is funding. It has thus far raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for its facility outside of Prague and, in the course of moving ahead with it, has just added a third level to the main building. It needs millions more, however, to complete construction, purchase expensive diagnostic equipment, and get treatment for Schams at TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston. In the meantime, the war continues, billions of dollars go every day toward its prosecution, and, every week, more soldiers, allied and U.S. alike, join Schams among those who will need a lifetime of care as the price for their sacrifices.

Uniting Against the War on Women

By Terri Rodabaugh

We have been inundated lately with Representative after Representative trying to pass legislation limiting what women can and cannot do with their bodies. We are being made to have transvaginal ultrasounds before getting an abortion. Have you ever had one of these ultrasounds? I have ... several times, for reasons pertaining to the medication that I am on that helps to eliminate estrogen in my body so that cancer can't grow. It wasn't painful but I can imagine how degrading it would be to have to have that done to you. It seems to me to be a sort of torture, maybe even a form of rape because it is against the woman's consent. It is a form of control, of bullying, plain and simple.

Soon, mark my words, there will be lawsuits against the government for making a woman have to do this. I can assure you there are already women lining up at their local legal aide offices to file complaints. I know I would. And, if they are smart, they will.

What I see happening here is the need for us all to come together. We as women need to stand together and say "no more." Women need to forget all about what political party we are from and work side-by-side to not let these atrocities happen. What's next? Forcible castration? We might as well live in a Third World Country.

Recently, I read that Georgia Representative Terry England (shown here) is trying to pass legislation to make a woman carry a stillborn fetus to term. What the heck for? More control, that's what for. Make us all feel like chattle won't you? For a woman to carry a stillborn to term is very dangerous. The stillborn child starts to decay within the woman carrying it. It could kill her. Is that really where we want to go in this country? Where is the compassion for others. Why are we allowing this to happen? We shouldn't be.

And don't get me started about Rush Limbaugh. He is just the voicebox of many men out there and it is frightening to think that we are thought so less of.

On April 28, 2012, there will be a march on your state capital asking for the War Against Women to cease. We are fed up and it is time to stand together as one unit.

You can find the march in your area by going to the Unite Against the War on Women page on Facebook. Join the group, find out where members are meeting, and march with us. You men who love your women, march along beside us and show your support. The time has come.

But it also makes me wonder, why now? What are they covering up? I believe something is going down in this country. Something they don't want us to see so they make all this chaos. What is being done without our knowing? We will soon find out and God help us all.

"There is a special place in Hell for women who do not help other women," Madeleine Albright said in what has become one of my favorite quotes. Let's do this ladies ... it's time. We can't shut our eyes and think this will all go away. There is no going back to the Dark Ages for us. Let's blow the lid off this thing so we can start to see what is truly going on.

Food Stamps, Christianity, and the Meaning of Irony

By Michael O. Varhola

Recent comments by Newt Gingrich characterizing President Obama as the food stamp king may be at the root of an item currently making its rounds across the Internet and being posted to people's social networking pages as if it was something they came up with on their own. Whoever did actually generate the following quip, however, is not taking credit for it:

"Isn't It Ironic?" this unattributed item asks. "The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever. Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to 'please do not feed the animals' because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves."

This self-consciously cute but subtly vicious item -- which is similar to and may have its genesis in comments made by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in January 2010, for which he subsequently apologized -- struck me in a number of ways.

First is the way it implicitly equates food stamp recipients with animals. I will not go as far as saying this is racist on the face of it, although I suspect that the image that comes to mind of food stamp recipients for many of the people who re-post this item would, in fact, brand them as racists. Perhaps worse, however, is that it is simply misanthropic and reflects a general despisal of other people.

Second is the suggestion that U.S. Department of Agriculture personnel should actually be ashamed that they are accomplishing the things they have been tasked with. These civil servants are simply carrying out policies they have been assigned with fulfilling and if they successfully do so then there is no reason they should not be pleased with it. Are the people who re-post the item being discussed here ashamed of what they do on a day-to-day basis? (Although if some of them actually took a full minute to think through the implications of the things they repost without consideration then the best of them probably would be a little bit ashamed.)

Finally, it struck me that this item is itself ironic in two key ways.

One is that, in one of the most prosperous nations on earth, people who have enough to eat would object to a program that helps provide food for the impoverished. This really is the epitome of smug cruelty and I would be willing to bet that none of the people who have re-posted this item have actually gone hungry because their taxpayer dollars have helped feed those who are neediest.

What is even more ironic, however, is how many of the people who repost items like this and embrace the ideas behind them characterize themselves as Christians! I absolutely support the right of everyone to believe what they want and to express those beliefs, the ones described here included. But the hard, cruel, nasty sentiments expressed in the item being discussed here are assuredly not Christ-like and is makes my skin crawl to think of Jesus saying something like this. If people with such ideas were simply to admit that they were Satanists, pagans, pragmatic atheists, nihilists, or just about anything but Christians there would be no disconnect between their attitudes and their ostensible ethos. It is perfectly legitimate to believe that other people are animals or that impoverished children in wealthy nations should go hungry — it just isn't compatible with the tenets of Christianity.

What is truly ironic is the idea that these two diametrically opposed sets of ideas are in any way compatible with each other.

A (Belated) Response to a (Strange) Hoax

Almost two weeks ago, I received a many-times-forwarded message with the subject “Congressional Reform Act of 2011” (see Debunking 'Congressional Reform Act of 2011' on this site). On the surface, it appeared to be a typical piece of Tea Party/neocon invective that was unexceptional in any way; it started off with the obvious lie that it had originated with Warren Buffet, and then went on to call for a number of “common sense” responses to problems that don’t really exist, etc., and looked like something that had been making the rounds on Facebook a few days earlier. When I looked to see if I could tell where this message had originated, however, I was struck by a genuine surprise: It had, by all accounts, been sent out by the Chair of the Democratic Party of Comal County, Texas!

“While I personally do not fully agree with all of these suggestions, they are a good place to start,” this good lady writes at the beginning of her message. In that the contents of the message were ultimately written by the kind of people who make Democrats feel nervous about living in Texas, I would imagine that she would not agree with them. Why things she does not agree with would be “a good place to start,” however, I have no idea.

The idea that the leader of an organization representing besieged Democrats in a frighteningly Red state would be sending out rightwing literature was too much for me to accept and so I immediately sent her an email message to let her know I had received it. I expected she would probably let me know that she had been a victim of identity theft, but figured there was also a slight chance she would embarrassedly admit to accidentally disseminating something she had not bothered to verify (or even read very carefully to ensure it was in keeping with her party’s ethos).

When I had not received a reply after three days, I followed up with her again, once again emphasizing my affiliation with this site and my intention to publish an article about the hoax to which she had, one way or another, been party. That was a week ago and, as of this writing, she has still not had either the sense or the courtesy to reply to me or the readers of this site.

Seemingly coincidentally, right after I sent my first message to the Chair of my local Democratic organization I received a friendly and somewhat solicitous message from a gentleman who shared her last name. A little investigation revealed that this individual is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat, that he is also a member of the Democratic Party of Comal County, and that he is, in fact, the husband of the woman who had sent out the message being discussed here. We traded a few messages but, when I asked him about the email message that had originated with his wife, it went quiet at his end and our correspondence ceased.

And so, in the absence of any kind of a response, I am left to conclude that the most recent rightwing hoax to cross my desk originated with … a local office of the Democratic Party. This is certainly not an auspicious way for an organization of this sort to start off any year -- all the less so one in which we are about to experience what might be one of the most crucial national election cycles of our lifetimes and in which the Democrats will need to be on their game.

Debunking 'Congressional Reform Act of 2011'

Like just about everyone else in America with email, I regularly receive political messages that are, to a lesser or greater extent, hoaxes. Sometimes I respond to these messages personally by debunking the hoax for the person who sent it to me and possibly the other recipients; sometimes I respond publicly, generally with an essay on the Religion, Politics, and Sex website; and, often, I just let it go because I have got too many other more pressing things on my plate.

What usually surprises me is how quickly and easily I am able to get to the bottom of the lies behind such messages, often with the help of websites like Snopes.com. In such cases, I am generally left mystified by the number of people who simply forwarded them with apparently no attempt to verify the truth of what they were sending out to their friends and relatives and calling for action on. I am, of course, giving my correspondents the benefit of the doubt by assuming that again and again they allow themselves to be tools for whatever individuals or entities are deliberately attempting to spread false information; some of them, presumably, are not just unwitting dupes but, for reasons of their own, are knowingly party to trying to deceive the people they are emailing.

Recently, I received a many-times-forwarded message of this sort titled “Congressional Reform Act of 2011” that at first appeared to be a typical piece of Tea Party/neocon invective with one notable exception: It had originated with the Democratic Party of Comal County, Texas! (See A (Belated) Response to a (Strange) Hoax on this site.)

Following is the text of this odd message. As is usually the case, it is either obviously or verifiably false in almost every way and very poorly written, begging the question of why anyone would forward it to other people. My comments/debunks follow various points in brackets. Snopes.com does a pretty good job of addressing most of this at the post titled 28th Amendment.

Winds of Change ... Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. [Warren Buffet is not retarded and therefore knows that most of what appears in this message is pure falsehood. Some comments he made in a recent interview were used as the basis for claiming he ultimately authored this message, but in fact he has never made such a call to action.]

1. No Tenure/No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. [The falsehoods implied by this item, as well as #2 and #3, are easily clarified by anyone at About.com U.S. Government Info.]

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. [Yes, by God! Why should members of Congress be allowed to break the very laws they presume to impose on the rest of us. … Indeed. This really is a foolish item, in that elected officials are already accountable for following the laws of the land. If they violate them, they either get punished or they get away with it, but there are no legal provisions giving them a pass.]

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. [As far as I can tell, this item does not mean anything, and more than anything seems intended to mock the intelligence of anyone who would forward a message containing it.]

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. [Really? Not sure if this is true or not; messages like this that spread generally do so at the same rate as any other contagion, so maybe it is actually accurate.]

Endorsing a Republican Candidate

In November, millions of Americans will cast their votes for the person they most want to see become the next president of the United States. It is already shaping up to be a heated campaign and will pit one of the most controversial administrations of modern times against whoever ends up being the Republican nominee and any number of third-party candidates.

The rump hopefuls don’t have any hope to speak of, of course, and the contest is ultimately going to come to a toe-to-toe slugfest between incumbent Barrack Obama and the as-yet-unknown Republican candidate. Who that should be — perhaps more so even that who it ultimately will be — is thus a matter of great interest for Americans in general and the editors of this site in particular.

A good first step in getting to who should be the Republican nominee is to figure out who it should not be and to many of us there are some easy answers to that.

It seems obvious that the next chief executive of our country should not be someone who is stupid. Right there that rules out Rick Perry for anyone who values intelligence, and his weird antics, rambling monologues, funny faces and gestures, and memory lapses clearly mark him as someone who is mentally defective. Unfortunately, ever since that most brilliant of Democrat presidents, Jimmy Carter, was unable to resolve the Iran Hostage Crisis in the late 1970s, Republicans have responded by trying to place simpletons in the White House (just try to follow the painful thought process behind that … ). Sarah Palin has confined her involvement in this election to inane commentary and Michelle Bachmann has dropped out, and Perry is tanking in the state caucuses, so we may actually be clearing out the lower end of the intellect pool fairly early on.

To me, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the next president of the United States should not be verifiably corrupt. That pretty much rules out Washington insider Newt Gingrich, who has by all accounts been too cagey about his personal finances and accepted an awful lot of money from Freddie Mac and Fannie May — by his own admission for doing nothing! A willingness to take taxpayer money in exchange for doing admittedly nothing — and in actuality for influence peddling — should make Gingrich completely unacceptable. (Recently, there was a message making its rounds on Facebook in which the author suggested that because Gingrich was more articulate and better able to give a good speech that we should set aside his faults and elect him on that basis alone. Have we really slipped that far? That is reminiscent to me of the students who campaigned for Bill Clinton back in the ‘90s with the line “Character is not an issue!”).

In that most Americans are not wealthy and have felt the impact of the recent recession, the next leader of the American people should definitely not be party to making them the vassals of one-percenter business interests. That, by all accounts, rules out Mitt Romney, who would have business interests directly peddle their goods and services to children via commercial advertising on Sesame Street and would prevent workers from forming labor unions. It never ceases to amaze me that people of relatively modest means would get behind people without their economic interests at heart, and yet it seems to happen increasingly.

Finally, our next president should not be a bigot. Whether anyone likes it or not, America is a nation of many peoples, and intolerance for the ones that are not like oneself divides and weakens us as a country. So, even though the “young people” are rallying behind unapologetic demonstrated racist Ron Paul, that pretty much rules him out (and most of those young people are those smug little creeps who have not yet had the chance to experience much adversity in their lives and their numbers will wane as they come to the grim realization that most of us do).

Those exclusions don’t leave too many candidates on the Republican slate! There is one that remains, however, someone who cannot just be excluded by the above criteria and who beyond that is in palatable in his own right, and that is John Huntsman. He is educated and articulate. As the former U.S. ambassador to China he is experienced in foreign affairs — something that xenophobic amongst us, as well as those that think wars are a substitute for diplomacy, don’t get at all, but which is absolutely critical in the globalized real world. And, as a Republican who has served in a Democrat administration, he has demonstrated that he can work with leaders on both sides of the aisle and is not inclined to be a polarizing influence.

In light of the above, the editors of Religion, Politics, and Sex, have decided to endorse Huntsman as the Republican candidate for president. His attitudes, frankly, are so undeniably more progressive and intelligent than those of any of his other GOP colleagues — and his portfolio and experience so clearly superior — that it is somewhat inexplicable and dispiriting that, far from being a frontrunner, he is trailing behind all of the other surviving candidates mentioned above. If there is one characteristic many of this election’s extreme and weird slate of Republican candidates have shown, however, it is a tendency to self-destruct. As there is nothing to suggest that Huntsman has this particular trait, we can hope that he might be the last man standing while his opponents implode and drop out amidst shame and scandal. And, if that happens, Americans who feel the need to vote a GOP party line or want an alternative to the current administration may actually be able to make a viable choice.