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Hear, hear. I pray FR doesn’t become the asinine circular firing squad it was in the runup to 2012.

Too late...

The purity crowd seems to think their "perfect" candidate can win over the majority of americans even republicans, many who vote on looks, charisma, gender, sexual identity, handouts and the candidate who have the best gibsmedat platform...

I'd take a incomplete conservative candidate with a couple of asterisks by their name...

The purity crowd

Before I ever settle on 'who', I look at 'what' and 'when' in their history.

For example, in 2008, half of this board jumped on the Fred Thompson bandwagon even before he announced his run. I did a quick Google search and found that Thompson was little more than McCain-lite. Thompson not only endorsed Campaign Finance Reform while he was Senator, he also headed the committee that wrote it. It was originally labled Thompson-McCain-Feingold.

If a candidate has a moderate history, he/she may claim all the conservatism they want, but they are still moderates. Compassionate conservatism fooled many of us once. Look at how many on Capitol Hill ran as conservatives and serve(d) as GOP-elite moderates.

It is more than purity. If you vote for the same, don't expect a different result. If you can't determine what they stand for, changes are they don't stand for anything.

For decades, we have been given the lesser of 2 evils from the two major political parties. That is not a pretty history and has brought us to the current state of the Nation.

Again in 2016, my state GOP primary is late in the primary season. As with 2008 and 2012, the party nominee will probably be determined weeks before my state primary. That makes it generally irrelevant to jump on any of the early bandwagons. Look back at 2012 -- so-called GOP frontrunners were crashing every few weeks. During that primary season there were about 6 different frontrunners. The nominee was the GOP-elite selectee and he was never a frontrunner.