honestly, I am damned sick of these circular firing squad ‘leaders.’ Can’t they just keep their mouths shut for one day?
Romney wasn’t my first choice, but by election time he’d won my respect for the way he conducted himself and his campaign. He was up against the Chicago Machine.
No Republican or conservative is going to win office without a coalition, there just aren’t enough ‘pure’ conservatives. The Tea Party is one thing, the Religious Right is another. There are fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and on and on. And none seems to think any of the others are “real” conservatives.
Conservative “leaders” will have to learn to stand together or hang separately. Our Founders knew that, it’s past time their successors learned that lesson.
The tea party is mostly made up of social conservatives, the “religious right” voters, who are also economic conservatives, so there aren’t as many groups as you think.
Basically there are actual conservatives, who are social, economic, and defense conservatives, and then the social liberals, who are democrats that like the economics of conservatives.
Basically two groups, the Reagan wing versus the Romney/Rove wing.