2016 Election: The 5 Hopeless Republicans Who Should Drop Out

Campaigns have breaking points: the moment when a politician realizes he/she doesn’t have the funding to pay his staff and cover his/her expenses. A great indication of when a campaign is about to end is the burn rate—the rate at which the candidate’s expenditures exceeds the money raised. When a candidate has a high burn rate and a low prospect of wealthy donor support, it spells the doom for that campaign.

In this election year, the Republican field has become so great in number that the Republican donors simply have too many hungry mouths to feed. With so many candidates scrambling for the leftover crumbs, it is inevitable that we will soon see a huge exodus of contenders from the race.

It’s almost ironic how Republicans often convey themselves as vanguards of fiscal responsibility, even though half of them are spending money they don’t have to be in a presidential race they have no chance of winning.

Note: This ranking won’t include the names of the candidates who have arrived at a dead end and have no hopes of moving beyond the shameful 0-3% they’ve garnered: Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, and Rick Santorum. Instead, it’ll focus on the not-so-obvious contenders in the top ten who will see their dreams of becoming president collapsing in the near future:

5. Rand Paul – It was highly anticipated that the Senator from Kentucky and libertarian-conservative firebrand was going to shake up the Republican Party during this election year and reform its archaic views on the NSA, big government spending, and the war on drugs. Now, it looks like he may be the next contender to quit the race. Paul’s main strategy throughout the race has been to construct a firm coalition of civil libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and anti-establishment Republicans. In trying to find the sweet point—a delicate middle ground between libertarianism and conservatism—Rand ended up forfeiting his father Ron Paul’s loyal libertarian base by being too mainstream and hawkish on foreign policy. However, the greatest damage inflicted upon Paul’s campaign was Donald Trump, who siphoned off Paul’s anti-establishment voters who were hungry for an energetic outsider to move politics out of the mainstream. The RCP polling shows that Paul was in a consistent third place position with double digits until Trump announced his candidacy and sunk Paul’s polling to low single digits. Although Paul is able to capture the younger conservative generations’ dissent from outdated Republican social and foreign policy, he fails to seize upon the voters’ outright anger and rage towards politics as usual, which Trump epitomizes so well. In this election cycle, where anger and rage translates into top swing state polling, there is simply no more room for Senator Paul’s calm-minded rationale.

4. John Kasich – Two debates later, it’s become apparent that John Kasich is the Jon Huntsman of this election year: a moderate, cool-headed, pragmatic conservative who unfortunately has no way of winning over the far-right conservative primary voters. Kasich is definitely the choice for moderate Republicans who want to back a independent that isn’t plagued by the ‘Bush’ name, but this small group of voters is overpowered and buried underneath by the vocal anti-establishment Trumpites. Recently, Kasich took off this gloves to attack Trump for supporting mass deportation of illegals, Carson for suggesting the repeal of Medicare, and Bush for taking pride in his obstructionist vetoes. However, his temporary escalation did him no favors as primary Republicans saw him not as a pragmatic moderate but as a “RINO” who attacked his party’s ideology for political gains. To rational voters, he is the only adult in the room, but to most voters, he is unfortunately a lost cause who should drop out.

3. Mike Huckabee –  Unlike the other candidates on this list, no rational person expected Huckabee to do well. Out of the ten top candidates in the GOP race, Huckabee raised the lowest with just $1.24 million. He won the Iowa caucuses by a sizable margin in the 2008 election cycle because of the large numbers of Christian evangelicals and the religious right backing him. This election year, however, there are several other fresh social conservatives such as Ted Cruz and Ben Carson who are cannibalizing Huckabee’s core base. Huckabee is in desperate need of a controversial, groundbreaking moment to remind the primary voters of his name again. Recently, he’s attacked Rainbow Doritos, said Obama’s mannerisms towards Pope Francis was “classless,” and built an unnecessarily sensationalistic scene surrounding the release of Kim Davis. However, none of these methods proved to be politically sustainable as he quickly faded out of the voters’ minds again. Expect his departure from the race to be the same as his entrance—with no one caring.

2. Chris Christie – The Governor of New Jersey was once hailed as “one of the most intriguing political figures in America.” His blunt rhetoric made him a rising star within the Republican Party as a pragmatist who was able to get things done and mobilize the voters with his personality and momentum. However, instead of running for president in 2012, Christie chose to wait…and consequently missed his shot. Now as of late October, the national polls show that he barely scratches 3%. Whereas his enormous physical presence used to be manifestation of his large personality and political ambition, it is now nothing more than the target of jokes on late night shows. Even if Christie does make gains in the polls, his credibility will just be shut down when his political opponents revive the Bridgegate scandal in the public eye and remind the voters of how he threatened to withdraw hurricane recovery funding if a New Jersey mayor didn’t support his development project. Soon enough, the Governor return to New Jersey in regret that he didn’t bid for the presidency in 2012, when voters actually liked him.

1. Jeb Bush – It’s an absolute spectacle in modern American history to see a presidential contender with a household name, big endorsements from the GOP establishment, and large Wall Street donors flop so hard in this election year. His campaign is already drastically cutting his staffers’ salaries, showing that the burn rate is already exceeding the fundraising. Also, while Trump and Carson dominate the media circuits, Bush is only able to make the news when he’s talking about his marijuana consumption or his brother. To make matters worse, he is polling 5th in New Hampshire and 6th in Iowa. Trump may espouse ridiculous foreign policy and economic illiteracy that almost rival Bernie’s, but he is right about one thing: Jeb Bush puts people to sleep and that will never change. If Jeb is truly concerned about the future of the Republican Party, he should resign from the race and give his full endorsement to Marco Rubio, who has nearly all the advantages that Bush has with none of his blunders. Jeb once said that he will only run for President if he can “do it joyfully.” In a country where politics is becoming a violent sport, this could get ugly for Jeb if he doesn’t throw in the towel soon.