I said no such thing. Stop twisting my words to fit your desperate agenda.
I did correctly point out that there is no conceivable path for Hunter to win the primary. By definition, that means he is not the "BEST candidate".
There is also this underlying presumption, from where it comes I do not know, that Hunter is automatically the ideal choice for any "true conservative"™. But the fact is, there as many different definitions of "conservative" as there are conservatives, period. Personally, I find Thompson's more federalist stance far closer to my definition that Hunter's protectionist-lite pork-barrel version. While I certainly consider Hunter an acceptable candidate, I do not -- as do many others -- consider him the best candidate.
Then we get into pragmatism. For some reason, people operate under the delusion that the primaries are simply a game of "spot the conservative". It's not that simple. While there are certainly standards any candidate should be held to (e.g., Guiliani is patently unacceptable for both his liberal and authoritarian tendencies), creating too high of a standard means pigeon-holing yourself to candidates who stand no chance of winning because they do not have what it takes to win, that is, some combination national presence, organization, funding, and/or that nebulous "it" factor. The candidate needs to not only beat out his rivals for the nomination, he needs to be capable of winning the general election as well.
In all honesty, I think BringBackTheDraft and W04Man get it right: Even if Hunter can win the primary (a big if)... it seems like he probably doesn't have the appeal to win the general.
The "BEST" candidate by definition also has to have a shot at winning it all. Otherwise, it just doesn't matter.
The “it” factor you are looking for is who the liberal media will decide that they will cover—The Hollywood Celebrity Factor if you will. There have been documented situations where there are for example 15 antiwar protestors and 2500 support the troop demonstrators in the same area and who do they cover!?! The 15 of course. This is because they have an agenda! Do you think this agenda goes away when they do the election stuff????
Ravenstar