Can Republicans Keep Out the Clown Posse?

By Margaret Carlson

Honk if you aren't running for the Republican presidential nomination.

With Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee tripping over one another’s announcements this week, we now have 15 declared candidates, 10 who are exploring a run and five who could jump in, including the Harold Stassen of vanity candidates, Donald Trump.

This threatens a repeat of what Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus vowed he would never let happen again: presidential nomination debates that devolve into a circus.

Even without Trump in, this year could be worse than 2012, when former Speaker Newt Gingrich vowed to colonize the moon and briefly leapt ahead of Mitt Romney. Gingrich's real ambition wasn’t the CNN show he eventually landed but to be the colony’s first congressman.

The 2012 candidates said some strange things, but no stranger than what Carson, the pediatric neurosurgeon turned Obamacare scourge, has come with by comparing the health care program to slavery. Was lobbyist Herman Cain bleating "9-9-9" in response to every question any worse than former Arkansas Governor Huckabee scolding the Obamas for letting their daughters listen to Beyonce or blaming gay militants for forcing Indiana’s governor to retract his religious freedom act?

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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-06/can-republicans-keep-out-the-clown-posse-