The current political climate has resulted in reminders of celebrities that none of us have thought about in a while. First, there was Scott Baio. Then, there was Aaron Carter. Next, it was Three Doors Down.

The latest celebrity who, through the power of conservative politics, has come out of the woodwork is none other than Robert Ritchie, also known as Kid Rock. You know, the guy who sings “All Summer Long.”

According to a report from Roll Call, Kid Rock’s name was brought up at a Michigan Republican Party convention as a potential candidate to run for Debbie Stabenow’s Senate seat. Stabenow, a Democrat, has served in the Senate since 2000. She is one of 25 Democratic senators on the ballot in 2018.

While Kid Rock has not commented on the possibility nor has he been officially asked, a Michigan GOP spokesperson told Fox News that she “wouldn’t be surprised if there was a movement for him to run.”

If Kid Rock does decide to run, he might face some competition from none other than Ted Nugent, the hardcore conservative rock musician who was an outspoken Trump supporter during the campaign and appeared at a couple of his Michigan rallies. One such appearance resulted in Nugent grabbing his crotch on stage while he said, “I’ve got your blue state right here. Black and blue. Each and every one of you have only 24 hours to convince the numb nuts that you know, that you can’t vote for criminals, you can’t vote for liars, you can’t vote for scam artists.” Note that this is also nowhere near the most vulgar thing Nugent has done or said.

Speaking to The Daily Caller about a possible Senate run, Nugent said that he “is always interested in making [his] country and the great state of Michigan great again” and that “there is nothing I wouldn’t do to help in any way I possibly can.”

Kid Rock has proven to be less conservative than Nugent, once telling Rolling Stone in 2013 that he considers himself, politically, to be a “lone wolf” and “more Libertarian,” although he tends to vote Republican. In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Kid Rock spoke about his belief in gun ownership as a “sacred right.”

This past election, Kid Rock supported Trump, telling Rolling Stone that he would like to see America run like a business because: “it’s not really working too well running it not like a business.” Early in the 2016 campaign, he spoke of his interest in Dr. Ben Carson as a candidate. Kid Rock’s website also began selling pro-Trump merchandise during the election. A sample of this merch: a shirt with America’s electoral map on the chest, with the states in blue labeled “Dumbf*ckistan.” The shirt sold for $24.99 plus shipping costs.

Kid Rock has been touting his political beliefs for years. During the 2000s, Kid Rock would perform with a Confederate flag behind him, which came back to haunt him in 2011 when he accepted an award from the NAACP’s Detroit branch. He was also an outspoken supporter of Mitt Romney during the 2012 election. Romney called his song “Be Free” his campaign theme song and Kid Rock performed it for him at a campaign event. He also appeared at multiple Romney rallies throughout the country.

While he has been an outspoken conservative, Kid Rock did perform at an Obama inauguration event in 2009, telling The Guardian that, despite not voting for Obama, “there was an exciting sense of change in the air.” However, Kid Rock has said that Obama helped to create a country that was “more divided than ever.” He was, of course, referring to the tension that is rising among people living in red states and those living in “Dumbf*ckistan.”

If this past year has taught us anything, it’s that we should never say never. This 2018 senatorial race could be one to pay attention to.

VOTE KID ROCK pic.twitter.com/SwTMgckKbd

— Kid Rock (@KidRock) November 8, 2016

Austin Elias-De Jesus

Austin is an editorial intern at Law Street Media. He is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communication. You can usually find him reading somewhere. If you can’t find him reading, he’s probably taking a walk. Contact Austin at Staff@Lawstreetmedia.com.

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There’s a new weird feud in the political sphere. This time it’s between Governor Mike Huckabee–former and possibly future Republican Presidential hopeful–and people who like Beyoncé.

In his new book, Huckabee had a few things to say about Jay Z and Beyoncé’s performance at the 2014 Grammys. He stated:

My reaction: Why? Beyoncé is incredibly talented — gifted, in fact. She has an exceptional set of pipes and can actually sing. She is a terrific dancer — without the explicit moves best left for the privacy of her bedroom. Jay Z is a very shrewd businessman, but I wonder: Does it occur to him that he is arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object?

Then, last week, Huckabee took his comments further and slammed the Obamas for letting Malia and Sasha listen to Beyoncé. In an interview about his new book, in which he calls Beyoncé’s music “mental poison,” he said:

I don’t understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything – how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school and making sure they’re kind of sheltered and shielded from so many things – and yet they don’t see anything that might not be suitable for either a preteen or a teen in some of the lyrical content and choreography of Beyoncé, who has sort of a regular key to the door [of the White House].

Then, Jimmy Carter weighed in, because apparently we now listen to his take on parenting? He said that he thinks President Obama is doing a good job parenting his two daughters. The fact that he got involved in this whole controversy seems more odd than anything else.

Back to Huckabee though. Some people have pointed out that he is being a little hypocritical given his close ties to constant provocateur Ted Nugent, whose lyrics are often a bit off-color.

Jon Stewart had Huckabee on his show, and the whole Beyoncé-hating thing came up; he actually illustrated the Nugent point quite well in addition.

The clip is below, but highlights include Huckabee basically saying that Beyoncé makes girls want to grow up and get on stripper poles. And in response to the Nugent juxtaposition, Huckabee claims that the song in question wasn’t as popular as Beyoncé’s, nor as widely and publicly performed, and that it was created for adults. While it’s fair that Nugent is less of a prominent figure, to be sure, that argument seems semantical at best. Huckabee has had him on his show and promoted him. It seems tough to argue that he’s such a niche performer that we can’t compare his lyrics to Beyoncé’s. At the end, Stewart’s main point appears to be that Huckabee doesn’t like Beyoncé because she’s not part of the culture that Huckabee is used to, whereas Nugent’s values line up more clearly with Huckabee’s own. Stewart stated: “You can’t single out a corrosive culture and ignore the one that you live in because you’re used to it.”

It really does seem like a case of Huckabee severely simplifying a lot of what Beyoncé’s music is about. While she has some more risqué lyrics, many are about love, power, and feminism. No one is a perfect role model, but she’s better than most.

Also, Huckabee should watch out. The Beygency (the very real group dedicated to taking down those who don’t love Beyoncé) could come after him.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New Political Parties: Huckabee vs. Everyone Who Likes Beyoncé appeared first on Law Street.

I really like horror movies. And FX’s American Horror Story is a weekly ritual for myself and my roommates. There’s something about being scared through the dim glow of a screen that’s refreshing: you get to be glad that you aren’t actually experiencing the horror. And so today I decided to experience a different kind of horror…I googled potential 2016 presidential nominees barely a year after our last, extremely exhausting election.

This was me.

Everyone knows who the frontrunners are–Hillary Clinton in blue, and Chris Christie in red. There’s a whole big cast of characters as potential backups–Vice President Biden, Martin O’Malley, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, the list goes on and on. But for the sake of fun, let’s take a look at some of the weird shout-outs I came across, on both sides, for potential 2016 nominees. Fair warning: this list will range from actual politicians who may have a shot, to bonafide crazy people.

Oh wait, isn’t that the same thing?

5. Delaware AG Beau Biden

Beau Biden, courtesy of studio08denver via Flickr.

I expected to see Joe’s name on pretty much any presidential nominee list. I was not expecting a second Biden–the 44 year old Attorney General of Delaware. Beau is young, attractive, has a military background, and is overall a very attractive candidate for national politics. If his father doesn’t run, he could be a contender. But is he ready? And do Democrats want to start yet another political dynasty, à la Clintons? After all, they’ve seen how well that’s worked for the Republican party–Republicans haven’t won a presidential election without a Bush on the ticket since 1981. Finally, and believe me, this is the most important question, is it possible for any Biden to be cooler than Joe?

 Perfection

  4. Rep Peter King (R-NY)

Peter King, courtesy of United States Congress via Wikipedia.

Pete King (R-NY) has actually already declared that he will be running for President in 2016. King has a pretty long history of crazy statements that render him a scary potential 2016 pick. Let’s start with his claim that he’s kind of a fan of torture, or at the very least, coercive interrogations (which a former Republican nominee, John McCain, has rallied against for years.) He also used to be a supporter of the Irish Republican Army, a known terrorist group. He  has an extraordinary history of making offensive comments towards Muslims. In 2007, he claimed that, “that 85% of all mosques in the U.S. are controlled by ‘extremist leadership.'” He has stated that Muslim-Americans aren’t actually American. Immediately after the Boston Marathon bombing, he made a statement to the effect that we need to watch and put surveillance on all American Muslim communities.

Oh, Pete King, could you be more offensive? Please don’t try.

Pete King actually routinely slams the tea party, but still gets on this list for being a weird, creepy, hypocrite who I would really not like to see given a national platform.

3. Mayor Michael Bloomberg

MIchael Bloomberg, courtesy of Be the Change, Inc via Flickr.

Bloomberg has just finished up his last term as New York City mayor. His history is interesting; at various points in his life he has been a Democrat, a Republican, and now an Independent. While looking up 2016 speculation, I found both Democratic and Republican speculation–and in such a hostile partisan climate, it is extremely difficult to imagine that overlap. There has been speculation that Bloomberg would run in 2008 and 2012. Bloomberg wouldn’t be so much a horrifying pick as much as he would be a fascinating one. Socially speaking, he’s liberal, but fiscally conservative. Running a city like New York is very different than running an entire country, and some of the policies that he has instituted have been dramatically unpopular–everyone remember the soda ban? Any run, for any party, would be very interesting.

Most New Yorkers’ reaction to the soda ban.

2. Former Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

Allen West, courtesy of Mark Taylor via Flickr.

Tea party darling and former Florida representative, Allen West, or as I like to call him, complete nut job. He is more likely to run for Rubio’s senate seat, whether Rubio is there or not, but according to speculators Presidential run isn’t completely out of the ballpark. I don’t have room on this list to enumerate all the ways in which Allen West is off his rocker, but here are a couple highlights:

• One time when he said Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s right hand men, would be proud of Democrats.
• Anyone who supports Obama is a threat to the gene pool.
• Liberal women, “have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness —[we need] to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient.”
• He claimed well respected news outlet Al Jazeera tried to kidnap him.

Shall we all say it together?

1. Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent has said that people are asking him to run and that he’s considering it. In a Washington Post profile he said, “Things are just so wrong in the country now. And I know that my answers would make things wonderful, unless you just refuse to produce, and then I’d recommend that you move to Canada. Or Illinois.” Oh thanks, Ted, I forgot Illinois wasn’t a part of the US. I think we should have a new rule: if you have been investigated by the Secret Service for threatening a current President, you shouldn’t be able to run for that same office. Before the 2012 election, he claimed that “he would be dead or in jail” this time next week if Obama won reelection. Yet, people still want him to run for President–this “Ted Nugent for President” Facebook page has over 246,000 likes.

Ted Nugent? NO!

Well friends, no matter what, we’re in for an exciting ride in 2016. But, can we please not talk about it for real for at least another year?

—

Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Theresa Thompson via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 5 Surprising, Unexpected, & Horrifying Presidential Picks for 2016 appeared first on Law Street.