The presidential race this year has been an exciting one, to say the least. A millionaire/celebrity/businessman leads the republicans, and for the first time the prospect of having a woman president is a realistic possibility. The republican party has three candidates left in the race as of this date. Donald Trump leads the pack with 743 delegates, Ted Cruz is behind him with 545 delegates, and last but not least is John Kasich with 143 delegates. None of the candidates are even close to obtaining the number of delegates they need to win the nomination, (which is 1,237 delegates) so there is the possibility that the GOP will have a brokered convention.(For the sake of staying on topic I’m not going to explain this, but brokered conventions are very interesting and you should Google it.)

Personally, I think John Kasich is the only republican candidate that I can put some of my support behind. He’s the underdog right now, but I hope he gains some traction before the point of no return. In my opinion, of the three candidates, Kasich has proven to be the most tolerable of liberal beliefs. It’s his logic when it comes to balancing beliefs with the way one should conduct business that really stands out to me. In one town hall he explained his logic by posing a hypothetical, and to paraphrase, he said something along the lines of: Say you were the owner of a bakery, and you’re conservative, but a gay couple comes in and asks you to bake a cake for their wedding (fairly similar to a situation that happened recently in Oregon, isn’t it?) You could create a ton of controversy by sending them away, or you could just sell them the dang cake because that’s the service you decided to provide when you founded your bakery. This logic makes a ton of sense to me, and I think this is what sets Kasich apart from his competitors.

Ted Cruz is the next candidate I would give some thought to, but that’s only because I can’t endorse Trump over him. Ted is a little extreme for my taste. If you visit his website, everything is just so… bold. That’s probably the best way to describe it. (And I’m not necessarily saying “bold” in a good way…) There’s an entire section dedicated to how he stands with Kim Davis, and personally I just stopped looking through his site when I got there. One thing I have loved about Ted Cruz, though, through this election season is his debate skills. As someone who has been in speech and debate, his debate skills really stood out to me. I got really curious, and Googled it, and he has won many awards for debate when he was on the debate team for Princeton. Super cool stuff, in my opinion.

Last but not least is Donald Trump. What is there to say about this man that hasn’t already been said? Yes, he’s pretty much insane. His claims, his rhetoric: All cringe-worthy. But I do have to say there is one thing I really like about Donald Trump, and that’s how he owns (most of) what he says. It really has changed the dynamic of this race. While sometimes he can become manipulative with his words, when he has those moments of standing by what he says and not apologizing for it, I really respect that. He’s clear about what he stands for. Are some of the things he stands for absolutely wrong? Sure, but I think it’s okay to look at Donald Trump and appreciate (to an extent) how he has been running this race.