You can't seem to grok the idea of objective analysis. You aren't alone, but it is surely a sign that you also aren't engaged in it.
It is very likely that the Dems will win the presidency in the fall regardless of who we choose to put up.
If McCain loses, as is quite possible, if will not mean "no one can win without the conservative base". Omaba isn't going to have the conservative base, is he? Hillary isn't going to have the conservative base, is he?
The country might be better off if no one could win the presidency without the conservative base. But men can and have won the presidency without the conservative base. They have also won the presidency with votes from conservatives without actually delivery full fledged conservatism in office.
In fact, the only pol in my lifetime to even offer real conservatism as a presidential nominee of either party, was Ronald Reagan. (I was born right after Goldwater offered it, but of course without success).
Bush pere ran on continuation promises but had been the liberal republican standard bearer as long ago as 1980, and people should have known what they were getting. They got it. He did win anyway, with plenty of votes from conservatives. He was a hawk, but otherwise a typical liberal republican, readily swayed by the liberal press and a democratic congress.
Clinton didn't get a lot of conservative votes. He won twice.
Bush junior ran as an activist big government methodist do-gooder, and he has delivered typical Teddy - Wilsonian methodist do-gooder government. That has coincided with conservatism in a few matters - hawkish foreign policy, reasonably conservative judges e.g.
When there has been exactly one real conservative president since the 1920s, pretending no one can be elected without a by your leave from us is, well, pretending.
I am pretty sure seniors will also vote in the general election. I am pretty sure moderates in Ohio, and a handful of the more liberal upper midwest states, will decide who the next president will actually be. I am pretty sure the scale of turnout of true blue conservatives in Utah or Montana or Texas, will not matter a hill of beans.
As for Arizona, I'd lay dollar to donuts the Republican nominee can win it, whoever it is. And pretending that a state that has sent McCain back to the senate forever will swing the election by dropping him, is delusional.
I'd rather it were true that all republicans were Reaganite conservatives, but in fact only about half of them are. I'd rather it were true that three fourths of all voters were convinced republicans, but in fact we can barely get half in a good year with a centrist squish.
You don't have to like this for it to be true. I don't like it, but it is true. And I for one consider is decidedly conservative to live in the real world and face facts, and decidedly hysterical and silly and childish, to instead live in a fantasy of pretended special indispensibleness.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
You lead off with that, and then follow with this:
I am pretty sure seniors will also vote in the general election. I am pretty sure moderates in Ohio, and a handful of the more liberal upper midwest states, will decide who the next president will actually be. I am pretty sure the scale of turnout of true blue conservatives in Utah or Montana or Texas, will not matter a hill of beans.
It certainly seems it is you who is being delusional. Ohio does not decide Republican candidates. The South, Midwest, Rocky Mountain West, and Southwest take that decision.
If McCain causes those regions to go from red to purple, it won't matter a damn bit of difference what "Ohio and a few upper Midwest liberal states" want.
To return to your first statement, if yours is to be the template for objectivity, especially when failing to consider the South (which no Republican can lose and still win the presidency), then "objective analysis" is not all it is cracked up to be.
Having said that, there is no candidate running that can carry November for the Republicans. Not because the Dem field is so strong, but because the Pubbie field is so weak, and because the base is so utterly pissed off.
If the base stays home, which I am comfortable predicting to be the case this year, no Republican will win. That is just a fact.
Here is what I said, go read it again, "the GOP canNOT win the general election without the conservative base." In your reply, you twisted it to say "no one can win without the conservative base". Then using your twisted quote, you go on and on and on about this and that Demonkat won or can win without conservatives. I didn't say "anyone", I said "the GOP". Try "groking" the words on the page. I also did not say that no GOP candidate can win. I said no GOP candidate can win without the conservative base. That is why Bob Dole lost.
Don't speak of politics in a state that apparently you don't live in as if you know the politics in that state intimately. The reason that AZ keeps sending McWhacked back to the Senate, is that because he is a Liberal, Democrats vote for him. As a result, in his last re-election, no Democrat even bothered to run against the RINO McWhacked. And I did not say that McCain would not carry AZ in the primary or in the general, if nominated, though you seem to claim that I did. He likely would, again, because of Democrats crossing over and voting for their "favorite son". Again, you quote words that do not appear in my post.
If McWhacked were perchance not from AZ, I think he would not even carry AZ in the general election. There are a lot of Demonkats that have moved here from back East, and from La-La Land (CA), and have diluted the previous Republican majority here. As a result, we are on our second term of a Demonkat, liberal, lesbian governor.
I never said I, as a conservative, am indispensible. I said that I won't vote for a liberal with an R after his name, ever. And I expressed my opinion that a Republican cannot win without the conservative base. GW Bush, though not strongly conservative, was conservative enuf to have the conservative base support him, so he won. McWhacked is so liberal, that it is my belief that the conservative base would not support him in the general election, and thus he would lose. If you believe otherwise, then we agree to disagree, but that is no cause for rudeness on your part.
You sir, accuse others on this forum of being childish and hysterical because you don't agree with their opinions. That, sir, is not very admirable. Have a nice day. I'm finished bothering to debate someone who twists, distorts, and misquotes what I have said, when it is in black and white on the page.