Yep, me too. I was extremely hard on his liberal beliefs on family and marriage and homosexuality. And we should have been. We were right.
But then the doofuses ran McCain. McCain is just as liberal, only a liar about it. He didn’t fight and he was a weenie, war stories notwithstanding.
Might as well have had Giuliani.
As I recall, Giuliani was the frontrunner and so convinced of his money and inevitability (see Jeb) that he didn’t bother with grass roots and the early contests. He gambled everything on Florida and lost. As pointed out the GOP went RINO anyway. Rooty lost because of hubris not because he’s a liberal.