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Everybody said Reagan was the same way. He couldn't be elected the nominee and he'd never beat an incumbent Carter. He crushed his opponent in the GOP and buried Carter under a landslide of Biblical proportions. This is the thing that the liberals and their lackeys in the MSM hate: The fact is that conservatism when it runs AS exactly that, always resonates with the electorate in comparison to liberal realities and it usually wins political victories. So the left tries to pad it's side by trying to convince the RIGHT and the American electorate who are kept deliberately ignorant of the entire process and political acumen by their slaves in education that the only way to win is to elect a left of center "conservative." We fall for it every time, too. I'm backing Newt but I'd much rather have Bachmann. The best combo now would be for Newt to build a truly conservative administration by making either Cain, Bachmann or Santorum his veep. But Michelle is shooting herself in the foot, politically, by taking too many shots at Newt. Santorum would be a great pick. He's young enough to take over in 8 yrs. If Bachmann had a chance more than a snowball in a hot place, I'd be in her corner.

Many people get upset with Reagan comparisons. Ronald Reagan has been so deified - not entirely without good reason - that we have made it virtually impossible for anybody else to measure up.

But I'm old enough to remember Ronald Reagan when he was a failed presidential candidate and derided by many as a "B-movie" actor who co-starred with chimps.

I remember the 1980 campaign very clearly as it was the first election I really paid attention to and voted in. At the time, Reagan's upstart candidacy (he entered the race late) was seen by the GOP establishment as a nuisance and an unnecessary distraction. Many in the Republican establishment were pushing the moderate George Bush and felt that Reagan was just too conservative to unseat an incumbent president.

The establishment (RINO) GOP were so upset when Reagan started gaining traction that some of them backed John Anderson to bolt from the party to run as an Independent. John Anderson actually marketed his campaign as a moderate alternative to the "right-wing extremist" Reagan.

Despite the third party effort (Anderson ended up with 6,000,000 votes and nearly 7% of the total vote), Reagan whipped the incompetent Democrat Jimmy Carter in an epic landslide.

It is important to note that since Ronald Reagan last ran in 1984 (in which he also won in a large landslide), the Republicans have not run a real conservative since then...to wit:

1988 - RINO George HW Bush (won handily but it was Mike Dukakis)
1992 - RINO George HW Bush (Lost a fairly close election)
1996 - RINO Bob Dole (Lost to a flawed incumbent)
2000 - RINO George W. Bush (Barely won against weak opponent)
2004 - RINO George W. Bush (Barely won against another weak opponent)
2008 - RINO John McCain (Lost a close election to a socialist)
2012 - ??? Will we nominate another RINO like Mitt Romney?

What I'm trying to say above is that since Reagan, the GOP has run a RINO in every election since and the result is that they either lose or when they win, they win only by the skin of their teeth with the exception of 1988, which can be attributed in part to Bush Sr. benefitting from the lingering goodwill of the departing Reagan.

I feel that had the GOP run a real conservative like Reagan in ANY of the elections subsequent to 1988, the races we lost could have been won and the ones we barely won would have been blowouts.

It is thus very important that Mitt Romney is prevented from securing the nomination as his candidacy will almost surely point to a re-election for Obama as previous election trends bear out. Many Americans will go out of their way to vote for a conservative president but for a RINO, they will sit on their hands.