[9YearLurker]

McCain was undoubtedly better than the alternative, too—yet how much harm would he have done to the Republican Party, and how much progressive legislation might he and a Democratic Congress slipped through on us?

[meandog]

Trouble is we'll never know. I believe Gore might have a one termer and I know that Kerry would have been...and both would have paved the way for another "Reagan" as Carter did and, hopefully, Hussein is currently doing.
I give Bush credit on the response after 9-11 (especially in rallying the nation) yet I feel that he could have sparked a much quicker victory in Iraq. However, there is little other that I believe Bush did right. His drugs for seniors was nothing more than a precursor, IMHO, to Hussein's HCR, his Kennedy No Child is a joke and his failure to use a veto pen to curtail Congressional spending was a disaster that rang up record deficits (at least McCain is a spending hawk so perhaps we'd now be in better shape had he won the GOP and nation's nod in 2000).

[ImpBill]

Please, I implore you, do not take this personal, but I could give a crap less what happens to the GOP. They are as much of the problem as the other party, IMO. Worse, when one figures that a "conservative" will always operate on principle.

Unfortunately for the Republic, the only principle that matters to either political party is "power". And please don't use that "we must be in power" to accomplish anything. The GOP had the whole enchilada only to squander the opportunities they had.

Sorry if it sounds harsh, but this old man is sick and tired of them all. R's and D's.

[FroggyTheGremlim]

You guys keep blaming Republicans, like Bush, Mccain, ... for not being conservative enough.

I have a different take. It’s the media. The media is extremely clever at shaping public opinion.

Look at what they did to Jim Bunning. Bunning was absolutely correct in his stand. But the media portrayed it as an attack on the unemployed. And the media’s attack stood.

Bush cut taxes. But the media portrayed it as “tax cuts for the rich.”

Bush removed a horrible dictator and his evil sons, but the media portrayed it as Blood for Oil.

The media has created the image of conservatism as heartless, uncaring, for the rich only.

It takes superhuman strength of character and media savvy to overcome these media portrayals.

Our enemy is NOT conservatives, even if they are not as 100% conservative as we would prefer.

Our enemy is the media. Things are turning though: with Fox news, FRee Republic, Conservative talk radio, countless blogs and web sites for purveying the truth, we are starting to get the real message out.

But when we attack our own, we only harm ourselves. The media is the enemy - we should never forget that.

[Soul of the South]

“McCain was undoubtedly better than the alternative, too—yet how much harm would he have done to the Republican Party, and how much progressive legislation might he and a Democratic Congress slipped through on us?”

One of the major problems with the Republican Party establishment is its practice of running candidates who are “better than the alternative”. Bush I, Dole, Bush II, and McCain were all politicians put forward as better than the Democrat alternative. These candidates were all pragmatic politicians, not visionaries, not true believers in the principles of limited government delineated in the Constitution.

I for one am tired of casting a Republican vote because the candidate isn’t as bad as the other guy (or gal). I’d like to really vote FOR a patriot who has a vision of greatness for the country and a commitment to individual liberty instead of big government.