I’m excited to be a Republican this election cycle because my party has put forth the best set of candidates in a long time.
Following the 2012 electoral defeat the Republican National Committee released an autopsy to try and come to grips with why they lost two presidential elections in a row.
One take away from the autopsy encouraged the party to embrace the idea of the GOP as the “Growth and Opportunity Party.”
This is quite different than the traditional understanding of the GOP as the “grand, ole party.” The Republican candidates vying for the nomination embody the best our party has to offer.
If you have not been paying attention to the primary process so far, let me give you a quick rundown of the phenomenal lineup of candidates that are running in the Republican primary. These candidates represent an incredibly different Republican party than most voters have come to expect.
Ben Carson, a black man who grew up in dire poverty and eventually became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who knows first hand the problems our generation faces, has released an innovative plan to reform higher education in America.
Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning candidate in the race, has reached out to voting blocs that traditionally don’t vote Republican by speaking at well-known liberal campuses, such as University of California-Berkeley and meeting with black leaders in Ferguson.
Carly Fiorina, now rising in some polls, served as the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company by working her way up through the corporate ladder after starting as a secretary.
I don’t have the space to go through each individual candidate, but all the candidates including Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Chris Christie represent a new, vibrant Republican party that is poised to succeed in the future — no matter who becomes our nominee.
The vision of all these candidates remains the same, but each one of them brings new, necessary solutions to the problems our country is facing.
Meanwhile on the Democratic side, the party elites and the donor class have rallied behind scandal-ridden Hillary Clinton.
Presumed to be the nominee, she has continually seen her poll numbers drop as more and more Americans, including Democrats, view her as untrustworthy and dishonest.
After four years as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, she still cannot seem to name a single accomplishment.
The Obama-Clinton failed foreign policy has led to a more defiant Russia, an increase in Islamic terrorism and an increasingly awful Syrian refugee crisis.
Aside from Clinton, the only other viable Democrat running is self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders. Sanders seems to think he can win the Democratic nomination by promising the electorate everything under the sun.
His socialist, big government proposals have recently been estimated to cost an astounding $18 trillion dollars. Both of these candidates are running on platforms that would produce the same disastrous results as the Obama presidency.
As Republicans, we have the choice to elect a party of diverse candidates — minorities, women, older, younger — who faced our problem of student debt and candidates who pulled themselves up from poverty.
Or, America can elect a party with retread candidates who promise everything, deliver nothing and who grew up facing none of the problems we face today and can’t seem to follow the law.
The Republican candidates represent the Republican Party I am proud to support; a party that believes the American people are at their best when the government gets out of the way and lets the ingenuity of the American people prosper.
Charlie Hoffmann is a senior majoring in strategic communication and economics.
