Also, let's not lose perspective of the core issue. This is about winning elections in more liberal states such as CA. If you can get a 90% or 85% conservative who can win elections in places like CA or NY, please make sure to ping me. I'll be one of their biggest cheerleaders and supporters.
This is not so say that I don't support strong conservatives for public office. I think I made my point clear that if you have a candidate like Duncan Hunter, who can't even win in his home state, then you need a better candidate and a better plan to win in CA.
Capisce?
Your statement in the prior post made it sound like you had a lesser bar set for our candidates. You didn’t make yourself clear in trying to distinguish between high standards and high expectations, although I don’t think there’s necessarily a huge difference. My expectations, however, go so far as merely expecting our candidate to keep their word and not lie to our face, with respect to policy, I expect a basically Conservative record, try to hold the line on taxes or cut them, try to hold the line or cut the size of government, and as a party leader, to leave their state party in as good a shape or better than when they found it. At least at the end of their tenure they can say they tried to do the best that they could.
With respect to Palin, I didn’t consider the situation with her daughter being a negative reflection on her (nevermind the media hypocrisy surrounding it all, the obsession with going on a gynecological expedition of a 17-year old while ignoring or downplaying the problems with the other candidates’ family members, the drunken speed freak son of Al Gore’s who could’ve gotten people killed, or Joe Biden’s drug-addled daughter, both of which would’ve been front page headlines were they Republicans). If anything, Palin’s handling of the crisis was expert. It’s one thing to avoid a crisis, but when you’re faced with one, it’s a test of leadership, and she passed with flying colors. The media was merely using it as an excuse to run her out of the race because they were, are, so terrified of her and what she stands for (and the fact she is one of those rare movement type-leaders).
Now, as I may have already mentioned, the problem we have with candidates goes far beyond NY or CA, we have to get through a gauntlet before we even reach the general that Dems don’t have to go through. In almost every state, there is a party establishment that tends to promote big government liberals and they don’t want candidates that favor Conservatism, and that is even a problem in my state, where these rich, connected establishment types curbstomp any candidate that threatens their deathgrip on the state party. For the most part, the richer they often are in the GOP the more liberal they tend to be. Most of the movement Conservative people are of far more modest means, and they have to mobilize and motivate people as opposed to writing a check in order to get visibility.
Worse, yet, here in Nashville, a lot of those rich Republican establishment types are simply in bed with the Democrats. That article I pointed out to you on the Philadelphia GOP was not too far afield from the situation here, except the Nashville GOP never tried to win, nor was ever the majority (unlike Philadelphia prior to the 1950s), except for a brief period during Reconstruction. The party doesn’t even put up candidates for Mayor here, we haven’t had a GOP Mayor since Grover Cleveland’s 1st term. The party is content to just aid Democrats here rather than fight for their own. We certainly get no help from them in even Council races, where mine and an adjacent district, both poor and relatively high-crime, have two Republicans (while all the rich areas have very left-wing Democrats).
My point is that you have to get past all of that crap in so many areas before you even reach the general to face off against a Democrat. Most Dems don’t have any similar situation, and their party is fine and dandy with far-left moonbats, that’s mainstream to them. But try to run responsible, government-shrinkers with solid Conservative values, and the GOP establishment tries to either run them out, threaten them, or discourage them from even running. It’s often no wonder why in CA where you have a corrupted GOP establishment that Conservatives don’t bother to run with the crap they have to put up with (and even if they do manage to get the nod, like Tom McClintock, they have the RINO debris trying to saw the legs out from under them from the primary clear through to election day — they don’t want Conservatives, they’re fine with liberal Democrats). And right there is why we often see such low-quality candidates that have no business running for office, the good buddies of the corrupted party establishment core, absolutely indistinguishable from the opposition.
**And with an aside about Duncan Hunter, who hails from CA, my point above as to why he wouldn’t even be allowed to get near a nomination for high office is perfectly made. But as I also stated, Hunter was a good man, but he isn’t a movement leader type, that’s why even if he didn’t have a monolithic establishment trying to halt him, he still was a second-tier candidate overall, and that was one reason he couldn’t break through in a Presidential field. Simply put, unless he was very high profile to start with, House members just aren’t given Presidential nominations. No Republican has since James Garfield, but Garfield was already a Senator-elect when he became President.