[loreldan]

"There's absolutely no contender that is a bona fide conservative,"

That's because conservatives took themselves out of the race this past November. They stayed home to protest Bush, and because of that their main promoters like Santorum and Allen lost.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

That's because conservatives took themselves out of the race this past November. They stayed home to protest Bush, and because of that their main promoters like Santorum and Allen lost.

That's not true. The GOP abandoned blue-collar & other "supermarket" issues so you had a lot of these independents and people who don't normally vote go out and vote for the Democrats. Plus voters get fickle when the same party controls Congress & the WH.

That's why there should be a Giuliani/Hunter or a Romney/Hunter ticket for 2008.

[PhiKapMom]

They stayed home to protest Bush, and because of that their main promoters like Santorum and Allen lost.

Exactly! Now they are not happy with the choices. I was a longtime Allen supporter from OK, and we all know what happened to him. They also voted 3rd party in some instances which also helped take out Republicans and now have a hard time finding a candidate? If they are staying home in 2008 to teach another lesson because the candidate is not conservative enough, then we need to be reaching out to new groups of voters for 2008. I will vote for McCain if he is the nominee and for anyone on here that knows me, knows that is going to be hard to do, but I will vote for him in lieu of ANY Democrat. Notice the Dems that were touted as being conservative -- sure cannot tell it by most of their votes.

[freedomdefender]

conservatives took themselves out of the race this past November. They stayed home to protest Bush,

This claim is made ad nauseum on freerepublic, but nobody offers any evidence. The exit polls said the GOP lost because independents tilted to the Democrats.

[David Isaac]

They say money talks and BS walks.

[Iwo Jima]

That's because conservatives took themselves out of the race this past November. They stayed home to protest Bush...

That's not true. Nothing vaguely resembling that happened.

What it appears to me happened is that Bush won the elections and the conservatives and Republicans lost. Bush got the Congress that he wanted to push through his core agenda which had been and would have been rejected by conservatives and Republicans. As an additional bonus, he and the country club Republicans get to trash and marginalize the conservatives, blaming them for a result which they in fact orchestrated.