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sitting president. Now it was about who would be the strongest against whoever ultimately emerged from the sudden chaos among the Democrats where the outcome of that contest was unpredictable.
    Vying for the Republican nod were two governors, one senator, one businessman and one retired military man. Margaret “Molly” Haskel, the conservative, stunning-looking, silver-tonged governor of Texas, had been the frontrunner for nearly 18 months. Of course, nobody ever used her surname.To her hardcore fans, she was “Molly Hatchet,” on account of the fact that there was no state program in Texas that she had not hacked away at or cut entirely during her two terms in office. That record had helped Haskel placate the base in more than a dozen debates during the last several months, and she was benefiting from an intra-party skirmish amongst three conservative candidates who were running even further to the right and splitting the fringe vote.
    The other state CEO competing for the job was Wynne James from Colorado. Governor James was my kind of Republican. He’d balanced Colorado’s books without needing a hatchet. And he’d overseen the state’s implementation of the legalization of marijuana in a businesslike fashion without theatrics. James not only embraced same-sex marriage, he’d actually officiated the union of one of his cabinet members to a long-term partner. He was both a fiscal conservative and a social libertarian, which caused him to be viewed with suspicion and some derision by the evangelical forces within the party. His open support for abortion and gay rights—two positions that, I believed, actually reflected true conservatism since they meant less government involvement in people’s personal lives—made him a pariah in many quarters. But he didn’t seem to care and had refused to bend to the political winds of a very conservative primary process. Thus far he’d refused to court crazy, and it had cost him amongst the party’s most passionate. If Governors Haskel and James had squared off in the GOP that presided after Reagan first took office, James would have cleaned her clock. But instead he was trailing in the polls and many doubted he’d get out of single digits in any state but his own. He was the last vestige of a party that had once had as its standard bearers the likes of Nelson Rockefeller, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole. But this was not his father’s GOP.
    The remaining three Republican candidates used James for cannon fodder as they tried to out-gun Haskel from the right, a feat not easily accomplished. Senator Laurent Redfield of Georgia was a Tea Party purist. He professed to never having voted for a tax increase during a career that spanned 10 years in the Georgia legislature and two terms in the U.S. Senate. He opposed abortion in all instances, including rape and incest, and had called evolution “lies from the pit of hell” during a debate, which was typical of the way he courted conservatives. That sort of thing played well in primary season but was a death knell in a general election.
    Colonel George Figuera was a Marine who had distinguished himself in Iraq and received the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest award behind the Medal of Honor. Figuera was a one-issue candidate, running on a platform of strengthening national defense. He talked nonstop about the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan—both of which he had opposed. Figuera argued that the U.S. should have maintained control of both countries, and Iraq’s oil, a position that might have garnered him more support had fracking not begun to convince Americans that the days of energy dependence on Muslims were coming to a close. When Governor James quipped in an early debate that “Colonel Figuera never saw a U.S. base he didn’t want to expand,” he was hissed at by the audience, and Figuera took it as a compliment. Handsome and