Friday, January 6, 2012

Fred Karger: A Republican POTUS Hopeful You Haven't Heard About


While I haven't been completely dismissive of the batch of Republicans running for the party's nomination for President, the whole media circus certainly has painted the process as a bit of a clown show. I've already written a lot about the mainstream candidates that are still or at least were running at some point, but there's a handful of GOP hopefuls who are running that haven't been covered a whole lot.

Fred Karger is someone who hasn't run for political office, but has been involved in politics for most of his adult life as a volunteer, aide in the Ronald Reagan White House, and more recently, a consultant. He's semi-retired since then, but has recently come back into the limelight to fight California's infamous Proposition 8, which would restrict marriage in California to only heterosexual marriage via a state constitutional amendment.

Karger is a bit of an oddball in the Republican Party. He's pro-choice, Jewish, openly gay and supportive of LGBT equality, but has expressed strong support for Congressman Paul Ryan's proposed budget which would cut many federal programs by large margins.

He's also the only candidate that has aggressively targeted the Mormon religion. Karger said, in an interview with the UK publication The Guardian that "If a President Romney got a call from the president of the (Mormon church), he has no choice but to obey. It is obedience over family and country." While Karger's statement boarders a bit on the inflammatory side, it likely has a bit to do with how the LSD church kind-of-sort-of supported efforts to pass Proposition 8 in California.

Karger, who has never run for public office before, knows that his chances are slim. He's mostly self-financing his campaign, he's openly campaigning not just as someone who is gay, but even worse *gaasp*, a moderate. But I heard him say on a radio show that he hopes to get into at least one televised debate to show to the gay youth in the US that anything is possible, including running for President.

For more on Karger, you can visit his website.

Next, I'll be covering that OTHER (serious) Republican Presidential candidate that no one is talking about.

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