It was McCain's turn. The Republicans have a long history of nominating "the next guy in line". Nixon, Ford, GHW Bush, Dole and McCain are all examples. The Republican establishment doesn't want a Conservative at the top. The only real stand out in the past 40 years is Ronald Reagan. The country clubbers couldn't stop him, but they sure tried, didn't they?
They will always try, I believe, and unfortunately they are aided by people who push their candidates. There are many of those here. In 2008, in my mind the two best candidates from an ideological perspective were Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson. Hunter had little to no name recognition and was not the best debater. Fred Thompson would’ve been great, I think, but the fact of the matter is the guy just didn’t want the job. He had to be pushed into it. We were really left with Giuliani, Huckabee, Romney, and McCain. All were flawed candidates, but we ended up with the absolute worst of the bunch.
It will probably happen again in 2012. I wish it weren’t true. The country-club types will probably want to nominate the “his turn” guy, which I think is Romney. There are a bunch of candidates that are much better, of course, but people here who dislike Jindal (abb in particular has been complaining about him for years) will try their best to torpedo him before hand. Pence, Allen, and whoever else might be running will inevitably have dozens of detractors here who will ultimately help Romney.
It was McCain's turn. The Republicans have a long history of nominating "the next guy in line". Nixon, Ford, GHW Bush, Dole and McCain are all examples. The Republican establishment doesn't want a Conservative at the top. The only real stand out in the past 40 years is Ronald Reagan. The country clubbers couldn't stop him, but they sure tried, didn't they?
What do you think of my idea that we as conservatives need to come together as a large voting block behind a SINGLE conservative early on.
It's my contention we always split our vote among several conservative candidates and that allows the establishment RINO a path to victory with a plurality of the vote.
I have been trying to analyze how we can finally get a conservative nominee, as time after time the establishment RINO seems to win.
The only problem is (as evidenced here on FR) how can we get everyone to agree early on one candidate? Everyone sees their vote as a personal statement of their values and no one is interested in any type of pragmatism.
I think as conservatives, we are very strong in our beliefs and rightly see compromise as a bad thing.
But seriously, wouldn't Sarah, or Barbour, or Pence, or some other conservative(although perhaps NOT your favorite of the group) be better than Mittens?
I believe our only hope this time is Sarah Palin. I know there are some on here who feel otherwise. And that's the problem. How do we come together?