Your comment is totally brilliant.
Running for office without a family name, collective bargaining or unlimited trust fund is a daunting challenge.
Pounding every GOP candidate for minor gaffes is an indication that we expect perfection from normal, regular folks. Would that each of us had the spine to run for office instead of running our fingers over the keyboards.
Spelling errors are so unforgiving.
Elegant and eloquent.
I think it was Reagan who said something along the lines of it's better to have someone who's 80 percent your ally than to oppose them 100 percent. The way I see it: we're having difficulty calling the 80 percent. It appears there are many who credit an automatic 80 percent by sheer virtue of being registered as Republican -- that all else is minor.
Flinging the accusation of "purist" is a dead-end insult of zero use. I'm told I'm a "purist" for rejecting Romney; I'm tempted to tell anti-Palinites that they're "purists" for rejecting Palin. Both times the accusation is false and destructive.
For me, it kind of boils down to the simple things -- simple being very different from easy, as Reagan wisely observed. Simply -- does the philosophy reflect a commitment to LESS government and more INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY? If so, percentage up. If not, percentage down.
Simply -- does the philosophy reflect the understanding that the environmental global scaremongering strategy toward world socialism is built on a hoax of mathematical proportions and is ludicrous on its face?
Ignorant third-world tribes lacking in standard Western education as derived from modern science are excused, but there's no excuse for any American claiming a standard grade school education. In the timeline of hundreds of millions of years, our worldly existence here has been about one nano-microsecond in the context of a day; therefore it is mathematically absurdly ridiculous to presume trend-telling knowledge of the global climate -- people, a mere 20,000 years ago Florida was twice as big as it is now because the sea levels were so low; a mere 125,000 years ago, Florida was only half the size it is now because the sea levels were so high. 125,000 years is one and a quarter percent of a million years. Turtles and cockroaches go back about 300 million years. God handles the climate; man is along for the ride. EVERYTHING that happens on planet Earth is temporary. EVERYTHING.
So for me, a Republican who gives credence to the hoax that would shackle man for fear of "destroying" nature, an atheist premise at its core, loses a whole lotta percentage points.
Your mileage may vary.