This election season, the candidates abound and all of them claim to have all the answers. But can we trust any of them with the office?

First, the Republicans.

Mitt Romney cannot be counted on to stand by the principles that he is campaigning on. He used to be a liberal who supported gun laws and advocated for the freedom of same-sex couples to marry. More recently, he’s a new member of the National Rifle Association and aired a television advertisement during the Iowa caucuses trumpeting his support for a federal law banning same-sex marriage.

He used to support Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose, but in his bid for the Republican nomination he has promoted his views as strictly pro-life, emphasizing his belief that life begins at conception.

His ideological transformation seems genuine only to the most gullible of voters. He is a political opportunist who panders to whatever crowd matters at that particular moment. Who will matter to him once he is president?

John McCain is running for the Republican nomination, but I couldn’t tell you why. He disagrees with right-wing conservatives on almost every count, teaming with liberal Ted Kennedy to draw up an amnesty bill for illegal aliens and cooperating with Democrat Russ Feingold to increase government regulation in campaign finance.

He has continually voted for higher taxes while in the Senate and of all people to endorse him, Democrat Joe Lieberman was the first. He is for a very big government, a view that separates him from low tax, free market Republicans.

McCain has also stated that our troops should remain in Iraq for 100 years “if necessary.” McCain is in the forefront of trigger-happy, pro-war neoconservatives, a group which has thousands of brave men and women in uniform on their conscience in a war that never had to happen.

With a conservative base that is incessantly fed up with establishment Republicans and their badly managed war, McCain is not exactly a God-send.

Not to mention he’s a dinosaur.

Mike Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister, which is curious considering he suffered five admonitions and $1,000 in fines by the ethics committee in Arkansas for failure to report campaign payments made to him during his re-election bid.

He is also soft on crime, delivering a record number of pardons and commutations, including Wayne DuMond, a convicted rapist and murderer. Nice job, Shmuckabee. Furthermore, to the detriment of his so-called true conservatism, he raised taxes and spending as governor of Arkansas. When questioned about this during one of the debates he countered with an excuse that what he really raised was hope. Yeah, hope for a bigger government to give tuition breaks to illegal aliens, a bill which he supported in the 2005 state legislature. Finally, good ol’ Huck chose to deny Medicare funds for a 15-year-old rape victim, sexually assaulted by her step-father, to get an abortion. What a candidate.

Now, the Democrats.

Barack Obama decided to run for president of the United States after serving a measly two years in the U.S. Senate. By contrast, John McCain has been a Senator for over 20 years. Experience isn’t exactly his strong point. Obama is often portrayed as a diamond in the rough among a group of contenders with questionable histories of political dirt and controversies, which is an easy image to portray when one has barely any political history.

Anyway, while he and his supporters swear that he is the candidate for change, favorably deviating from the Washington status quo, in truth he is barely discernable from the others on most substantive issues. He’s opposed to the Iraq war and suddenly he’s this anti-status quo maverick? I don’t buy it. He’s as establishment as anybody else, only he promises change.

Apparently Obama’s supporters aren’t familiar with the notorious axiom that a politician’s promises are as empty as the skull of our current president.

Hillary Clinton is often held in high regard among liberals, which is difficult for me to understand considering her views so frequently parallel that which she is perceived to oppose, i.e. Bush policies. She voted for the Patriot Act and for its reauthorization, for warrentless wiretapping by the federal government and for the war (thus far refusing to admit that she shouldn’t have).

In the debates she has admitted she would keep troops in Iraq until the end of her first term and danced around implications that troops would remain at the end of her second term (that’s something like 2017). Domestically, Clinton wants to institute socialized healthcare, costing $110 billion and being paid for by hiking the taxes of incomes of $250,000 or more (note that even with the Bush tax cuts, in 2005 people earning $100,000 a year and over paid 82 percent of all income taxes).

Apparently Hillary hasn’t been paying attention to the stunning failures and inefficiencies of the federal government that have been on display, not just for the past eight years, but for decades prior. Her blind faith in a government solution to every social ill should be troubling to anyone, liberal or conservative.

More than half of eligible voters between the ages of 18-24 don’t vote. We’re often encouraged to vote by our elders and made to feel ashamed for staying home on Election Day, not fulfilling our civic duty. Here’s something new: don’t vote. Change has been a big theme in this election.

None of the aforementioned candidates can deliver the change that we so desperately need. I’m asking you to stay home in protest against this pathetic guild of political panderers, of dogmatic dictators, of stark records and naivet’eacute; masquerading as experience and acumen. None of these candidates can offer an honest, objective analysis of how far astray the American government has gone from its basic principles – and none of them seem to care.

John Glaser is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].