12.5 Fun - Simulation

Bestest Friend and I are in the middle of a blog project. Each day of the month we will post a picture on a pre-determined theme and write a little something about it. The theme for the fifth day of each month is "Fun."
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The simulation was a Republican caucus in Iowa in 2016. Unfortunately for me, I have no idea what the actual issues are or who the candidates will be, so I just picked five candidates (Bush, Paul, Huckabee, Graham, and Walker), put immigration, taxes, and energy policy on the candidate information sheets, and we went at it.

One student turned into a slick used car salesman in his pitch on Graham.

One student pretended to be a first-generation immigrant is his plea for Bush.

One student just couldn't hold back his disgust at having to speak on behalf of Walker and just gave up halfway through his speech with a shrug of his shoulders and a "what can I say? the guy's an idiot" as the rest of us laughed and laughed.

There was a lot of laughter, especially when we started creating hypothetical campaign ads for the candidates. "I'm Rand Paul and I support term limits, gun ownership, and the rights of unborn fetuses (but not the adult women who gestate those fetuses)."  "I'm Jeb Bush and I speak Spanish, so please vote for me if you also speak Spanish." "I'm Lindsey Graham and I make a mean s'more."

I'm not entirely sure they actually took anything away from the process (I wanted to discuss the differences between voting in the open and the secret ballot, but my students didn't seem interested in the topic), but Jeb Bush got the nomination in our little world.
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To see what Bestest Friend wrote about the theme of the day, check out her blog, Too Legit to Quit.