Where do I stand on Republican Presidential Candidates?

Well, actually I am still standing on the fence.  I have some problems with some of them, others are still pretty much a blank slate.
1. The Donald.  Fun to watch on TV, a great showman putting on a good show.  But he is a bull in a China shop and his mouth runs faster than his brain.  He has already offended a lot of people, and I figure if elected he would alienate everyone in the US in about two days, and everyone overseas in another few days.  How can a US president get anything done when everyone in the world is scheming how to get even with him?  The president's bully pulpit is one of the strongest things a US president has going for him.  It doesn't work so well when everyone is all mad at him.  Plus, early (not too reliable) polls show him loosing to Hillary. 
2. Rand Paul.  He is an isolationist.  He plans to pull back to North America and let the rest of the world go to hell in a handbasket.  This didn't work last time, in the 1930's the isolationists prevented us from dealing with Hitler while he was small enough to slap down.  That caused WWII.  Once is enough.
2.  Ben Carson.  Helova nice guy.  I'd go with him except he is so soft spoken I have trouble seeing a President Carson telling a Bashar Assad where to get off, let alone a real tough nut like Putin.  And he occasionally says things that make him look ignorant or naive. 
4. Ted Cruz.  Good talker.  Made a good impression at the Grafton County Lincoln Reagan dinner up here this spring.  Kimberly Strassel at the Wall St Journal thinks he is a opportunistic flip flopper.  She claims he is trying to woo Rand Paul isolationist voters by talking up isolationism.  She calls him a grandstander, who worked for a government shutdown over Obamacare, tried for a filibuster in defense of gun rights, and holding the Senate in session to protest Obama's immigration orders.  He has voted against defense authorization bills and voted to shut down NSA metadata collection.  Kimberley follows this stuff more closely than I do.
5. Marco Rubio.  Not bad.  Good talker.  Kinda young, but that might be OK
6. JEB Bush.   I'm not ready for a third President Bush no matter how meritorious JEB may be.  Seemed kinda lackadaisical on the campaign trail up here. 
7.  Carly Fiorina.  Made a fine impression speaking at the Littleton VFW in Sept.  She is smart, well informed, dresses appropriately (especially important for women), and knows her audience.  She was saying want the voters wanted to hear in Littleton.  Impressive resume, running Hewlett Packard puts her in the big leagues.
8.  All the rest of 'em.  Who knows?

Troop ships?

Meet the Press ran a video clip of Rand Paul worrying about Ebola contagion among our troops while they are packed onto troop ships.  Paul cited the cases of some cruise liners stricken with wierd virii that turned all the passenger's tummies.  As well as laying out a lot of the crew.
  The White House guy on camera, a white guy, didn't get his name, said "Oh we will screen them and everything will be OK."
   The White House guy should have said, and didn't,  "The US hasn't transported troops by ship since WWII."  Which is true.  They flew me out to Viet Nam in 1967, and they flew me back in 1968. 
    Anyhow, put one "idiot" chit against Rand Paul and a second one against the White House guy, who ever he was.  And by extemsion, one against who ever hired the White House guy.
   BTW.  Meet the Press and its competitors would make life easier for us poor viewers by placing name plaques on the table in front of all the players.  Even a news junkie like myself doesn't know everyone by sight.  Betcha plenty of viewers don't recognize anyone at all. 
   Then the discussion rambled on about Ebola, and the need to run in circles, scream and shout.  I give Gwen Ifil and David Axelrod one attaboy for not joining in the war dance, and saying we have just one case, where as West  Africa has more than a thousand deaths, and we can keep it that way. 
   There was a little talk about shutting down air travel out of Africa but it didn't really go anywhere.  There are few direct flights to that part of the world.  In fact the case in Texas had to fly to Brussels in Belgium to get a flight to the US.  Plus,  we have a lot of US citizens over there, and infected or not, they are Americans and America does not let its citizens die from a loathsome disease in African jungles.  We bring them home, we treat them, and so far we have had really good luck in curing them. 

Looking for a Republican Presidential Candidate for 16

Unless we want four more years of Hillary, the Republicans need to win the presidency in two years.  To get the country moving again, the economy growing again, people back to work again, we need to pass some legislation that Democrat presidents would never sign.  We need to repeal most, perhaps all of Obamacare.  We need to build the Keystone XL pipeline.  We need to explore for oil and gas offshore and on federal land.  We need to curb the EPA.  We need to stop wasting money on pork and crony capitalism, the Highway bills, the farm bills, the green energy boondoggles.  We need to start rolling back endless job killing regulations.  We need to fire the endless federal SWAT teams. 
   To do any of this Republicans need to win the presidency.  Hillary would veto ever one of this projects.  To win, Republicans need a candidate.  So far, the guys who make the evening news don't look very electable.
   Start with Rand Paul.  Nice guy, would enjoy having him over for drinks.  But, he is an isolationist.  Believes that American should withdraw to the continental US,  and  incur no expense, bear no burdens, and let the rest of the world take care of itself.  Nice ideas, but the last time isolationism gave us WWII.  If the US had joined the League of Nations, and exerted itself, Hitler could have been stopped, anytime up to 1938.  We could have laid down the law to the Germans, even removed Hitler from office.  The French and the British would have backed us up.  But we didn't, and Hitler went on to set the entire world on fire.  Look what Putin is doing to Ukraine right today.  We ought to stop him.  Rand Paul won't.
   And, Rand Paul probably shares his father's fetish for a gold standard currency.  I heard the elder Paul, ight up here in the Littleton Opera House, explaining how he would go back to a gold back currency.  And throw the economy into a worse tailspin than it is now.  To be fair, I haven't heard the younger Paul making goldbug talk, but I haven't heard him reject it either. 
   Chris Christy took a solid hit over the George Washington bridge lane closings.  Too bad, but that's American politics, a blood sport.  He's gotta do a whole bunch of recovery to be in the running.
   Ted Cruz might be a possibility.  He has a pretty good record.  But I don't know enough about him and I suspect a lot of people outside of Texas feel the same way.  He has two years to make himself better known.
   Condi Rice anyone?  I like her, but I suspect she will not run.
   Jeb Bush?  Nice guy, good family, but his father and his brother have held the presidency and giving it to a third member of the same family seems awfully like a hereditary monarchy. 
   We need someone....