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?

Jerry Brown goes on Meet the Press

And manages to say nothing of substance in 10 minutes of airtime.  They started him off on the California drought.  He talked about "progress" and " programs" and "Urgency".  Nothing about dams, canals, wells, and allocation.  The biggest water users in CA are farms, and you could turn off their water, let 'em go broke, and have enough water to supply everyone's homes.  Not a word about any of this.  We did learn that Jerry believes global warming is causing the CA drought.  And he doesn't like Ted Cruz, they played a clip of Cruz saying that the globe hasn't warmed at all in the last 17 years (which is true, according to GISS data).  Jerry doesn't believe that, and called Cruz "totally unfit to run for president". 
   Well, we know where Jerry's heart is.  And where is head is too. 

Lincoln Reagan dinner, Grafton County

This is a fund raiser that we hold every year.  For a lotta years we have been holding it at the Indian Head resort (fairly tony for northern NH) at Franconia Notch.  I've been going to this event for quite a few years now, to the point where I know by name a lot of the guests. 
  Weather was miserable, it snowed all day, putting down 5-6 inches by 3 PM when it let up.  Trusty Mercury charged out of the garage, up my steep driveway, and crashed thru the foot high snowdrift at the street.  Getting thru the notch was tedious, lot of out of state cars creeping along at walking pace. The road was OK, but a tad slippery.  Being New Hampshire, just about everyone showed up, dispite the weather,  except the guest of honor, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who was coming up from Manchester by car.  Fortunately he had a native driver who got him upcountry all in one piece. 
   Cruz is sufficiently famous to attract TV troops with a satellite truck, which they parked out behind the Indian Head with the dish pointed up at a satellite and filling up with snow.  Cruz is a good speaker.  His English is plain American, no hint of a Texas accent, or a Spanish accent.  Speaking to a Republican audience, he connected.  He spoke of supporting freedom of religion, freedom from federal snoopers, local control of education as opposed to Common Core, the Constitution, love of country, his background.  He did not propose any new federal benefit programs.  He connected with the audience, and gained standing ovations.  This guy is a good speaker.  He would make mince meat of Hillary in a debate.  He took questions from the audience.  The questions were friendly, mostly asking him to expand upon themes he had previously touched upon.  The questioners were all bone fide New Hampshire folk, known to me.  He did not say anything about immigration, but given his background as the son of a Cuban refugee, I would expect him to be fairly sympathetic to immigrants.  Anyhow, this guy is worth watching.  He speaks well, he talks about concrete issues that matter to Republicans,  he would be a very competitive Republican presidential candidate.  He talked about conservative issues, but they are important issues, which many voters cherish.  He avoided wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage.

Flight safety or political retailiation?

Ted Cruz accused the Obama administration of  forbidding US airlines to fly into Tel Aviv in order to pressure Israel over the Gaza strip.  He might have something there.  The flight ban was laid on after a Palestinian rocket hit within a mile of the airport.  Which is not nearly as dangerous to aircraft as a SAM. 
   Fortunately FAA dropped the flight ban to Tel Aviv after two days, which makes me think maybe they were really thinking about flight safety rather than retaliation. 
  That a responsible US Senator would make such a charge indicates a major loss of trust with the Obama Adminstration.

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....