Romney is clearly the best of the moderate wing candidates. The conservative wing needs a candidate, however.
I left Hunter, Brownback, Tancredo, and Paul out.
In my opinion they aren't well-rounded enough candidates. Each is very strong on one or two issues but they seem to draw their strength from those issues rather than having inherent strength from which to apply to the issues. It might be the reason they aren't polling well...in addition to MSM bias.
I guess my question is, if the 'conservative' base of the Republican party is so large, why is Guiliani leading all the national polls? and why does McCain do better than Hunter, Tancredo, etc.? If MSM bias is blamed, it doesn't matter, that's a given quantity candidates have to deal with and can't be magically eliminated.
In a nutshell: Too many conservatives are allowing the enemedia to annoit the front runner because, like the polls showing Kerry could beat Bush in January 2004, polls show Rudy could beat Hillary.
Too many are also waiting for Fred Thompson to ride to the rescue. I'm just not convinced he would be any better than Romney. Slightly more conservative on the issues, probably, but a lot less willing to work his tail off from what I've seen so far.
You can leave Paul out, because he's a moonbat. Ditto for Brownback, because he's a weasel. I see a natural alliance between Tancredo and Hunter, because of their solid positions on a wide range of issues. Tancredo, right now, is on a mini-wave due to the immigration issue. He's really no better than Hunter here, who has actually got some of the fence built.