Bob A Live by the sword, die by the sword.   This is the reason Romney is not our next President.  The GOP had sold out to the Evangelical voter leaving them few alternatives.  Look no further than the top 3 or 4 GOP candidates that had run for President.   While some were picking Guiliani early on to be President, the Evangelicals made it clear they would not vote for him and "threatened" to vote 3rd party..Rudy was the first one out of the race.  This left Huckabee, Romney and  McCain to battle it out.  Romney..well, he's a Mormon and the Evangelicals made it clear, there would be no Mormon in the White House.  The only reason Huckabee was still in the race was because he was an Evangelical preacher...but his support was too little too late.  McCain was left standing by default.  His support was lacking in the Evangelical area, so he chose Sarah Palin to patch up that hole.  This Christian Conservative process of elimination is no way to choose a President.  Its become very hard to recognize the GOP as the fiscally conservative, small government party they once was.  As a fiscally conservative, small government Republican, I find this beyond disturbing, words can not describe. 

C Stanley In thinking it through a bit further, I will add that I think another big factor in the collapse of the center right is media bias and the polarization of voter reading/viewing habits. When one candidate is presented in glowing terms and hardly scrutinized at all while the other is presented in the most cynical possible manner, constantly, by all but right wing news outlets, the supposedly neutral or nonpartisan voters are highly influenced by that.

BBQ I still don't get the love for Romney. It was never the Mormon issue for me, it's that he comes off as a used car salesman and I never believed his "conversion" to social conservative. If he would have ran as a moderate Republican he might have gone farther but I doubt can republican could win with this economy. Rudy is way too much of a neo-con, believes in cronyism and he ran a terrible campaign. He banked on Florida and forgot the momentum you get from IA, NH and SC. I still hope a center right faction will emerge out of the GOP and present the sound principles of conservatism.

C Stanley I don't agree about Romney. I'm not sure that anyone could have done what is needed for the conservative argument right now. Newt Gingrich is the only one who comes close, but has way too much political baggage so he's better off doing that from the sidelines. A bit off topic, and I forget who said it, but I read someone this morning saying that McCain should have announced that he's going to make Giuliani his AG and direct him to aggressively prosecute all who are responsible for the economic fiasco. Might not be a bad idea.

redfish Michael, Romney had incredibly low favorability ratings from both sides, and Obama would have more effectively been able to paint Romney as an out of touch rich person than he's done with McCain. I think you put too much stock in Romney's ability to repeat the conservative arguments. Romney might have been able to explain how the Democrats were against regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but wouldn't have been able argue he supported limited regulation, as his career in government has been about deregulation, and as governor, he didn't help the Massachusetts economy. Massachusetts ranked last on a lot of economic measures. McCain didn't need to be an ideologue, Christine, he could have effectively made the case for himself over Barack Obama during the last debate, but utterly failed to do that. McCain could have easily and effectively argued that Obama was being dishonest in saying McCain never thought any regulation was appropriate. I don't think he was able to do that effectively. I always saw McCain as a bad debater, back to when he ran in 2000. He doesn't speak clearly enough, often blusters, and has problems answering questions. McCain was not hurt for a while, because Obama has also generally been a bad debater. But what did we see this debate--Obama stopped his usual stuttering, and came out forcefully; McCain had trouble making his points. I thing a lot of the games McCain has been playing on the campaign trail, have not helped him set the right context for the debate.

redfish last or close to last--re Massachusetts

Lucrèce "Regular reader Christine Stanley wrote today that she believes that John McCain was the wrong man for the GOP, at the wrong place at the wrong time." Anyway, Mr. McCain has slim chances to win: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14380.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/10/the_town_hall_debate_punch_cou.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/10/the_town_hall_debate_two_mccai.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 I do not believe that Mr. McCain himself is the principal problem for the Republicans. The presidency of Mr. Bush is not only a economic failure, but also a moral failure for the so-called GOP: huge lies about Irak, Halliburton adventures, close relations with Enron, Abramoff affair, scandal of the military hospitals, "Plamegate", highly questionable nominations of prosecutors, etc., etc. Mr. McCain could not reject the Bush clique, but he could hardly win with it.

c3 As a former independent who joined the Republican party after moving to Arizona, (because at that time the Repub's dominated state politics and the "real election" often was the Repub. primary)  I can equivocally say that a desire to have a "new conservative" save the party would lead me to leave it.  I hear two strains in this plea for a "new leader".  1) A charismatic leader a la Obama (or Reagan).  Please note that both were/are far from the center of their parties.  2) A return to "purty".  Unfornately, in my experience, that means a return to the "wing".   Look how the Dems couldn't sustain  moderate strength in their party after Clinton.  The majority of Americans IMHO are relatively near the center.  Campaigns unfortunately don't appeal to the "better angels of our nature".  My core political philosophy is for the Federal government to do well those things it must and always ask itself before it begins a task if its needs to do anything.  Note, the operative verb is "Do". That was the core reason for my bias toward McCain, he'd tried to "do" things.Yes, Romney had done many things and I would have been very enthusiatic about the guy who fixed the Olympics and governed Mass.  I couldn't go for the guy we saw this past  primary season nor the guy who gave the speech at the Repub. National Conv.  Jindal is interesting but I need to see more.To me the two greatest blows to the Republican Party in the recent past are 1) we are not seen as the party of fiscal responsibility 2) GW Bush demonstrated administrative incompetence.  Even if you belief in small government, the government you do should be competent.  Alberto Gonzales, as a case in point, was incompetent,

C Stanley Lucrece- I understand and agree that Bush and the current economic situations are albatrosses around McCain's neck. What I meant  by my comment was that I previously was more optimistic that McCain was potentially the one Republican who stood a chance because he can plausibly present himself as 'not Bush', and he has had some appeal to independents.  The current crisis, though, requires more clarity and I feel that the GOP candidate should be able to articulate better why it's necessary to work on growing the economy rather than voters looking to the government for direct assistance in troubled times.

c3 christine;How do you sell "you'll get through this fine."  vs.  "Let me get you out of this mess!"