Being an opinionated, type-A personality, I end up in a lot of political discussions. I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about politics and usually find in these discussions that none of that preparation matters – my unpopular views are dismissed as irrelevant.

Recently, the common accusation is: “You’re looking for the perfect candidate. S/He doesn’t exist. No one can measure up to your standards.” Wondering if that was true, my friend Steven and I took the time to identify the issues that seem most important to us and to read everything we could find from what the five Republican candidates (who have a chance) believe about each.

One important note here is about the “Foreign Policy” category. We believe that foreign policy is inextricably linked to fiscal policy. One of the biggest problems with our military strategy is that we never consider the cost of it. If we were to rank these candidates on foreign policy with that principle in mind, they’d all fail. Instead, we agreed to consider foreign policy as if we lived in a world where these decisions had no economic impact. Our scoring system is simple: every issue is either a net positive (+1), neutral (0), or negative (-1).