Quintin Jardine's blog

So we’re one step closer to knowing who will challenge Barack Obama for the Presidency in November. I’ve seen a few wisecracks about the fact that the current front-runner believes that less than two hundred years ago an angel showed a man named Joseph Smith a golden book buried on a hillside, but to me that’s no dafter than most of  the stories on which organised religions are based. I prefer to ignore the candidates’ beliefs and look at their policies. Yesterday I read a resume of the platforms of all the current entrants and found common themes running through them; none of them want to pay tax, none of them like Obama’s flagship health care programme, and none of them are too keen on anything that smacks of social policy. They may all have forgotten that the less well off have votes too. Some of those might not be mobilised in mid-term elections, but when the Presidency is at stake, that’s a different matter.