Meanwhile, I think we should look for a package of conservative principles rather than a personality. Military heroes do not always make for conservative stalwarts but they do tend to be men of integrity and principle. I think of Eisenhower in this context. I recall the there was a boomlet for Colin Powell here on Free Republic some years ago and I felt that the conservatives who supported him were seduced by a uniform and by a skin color much like the entire American electorate was seduced by Barack Obama's color. Colin Powell is no conservative and his uniform and military bearing never made him one.
I like the looks of Jim DeMint right now but I don't know that much about him or even much of his intentions. Likewise Sarah Palin, I have no idea what her ambitions are. She has unequaled natural political talent, but does she have the discipline? The smartest guy in the running who has proven he knows how to throw the Democrats out of power is Newt Gingrich but he is flawed with personal baggage and some declensions from conservative orthodoxy-at least on the surface. From a purely mechanical point of view I think that Romney should have been the nominee last time around. But his hopscotching has been so blatant that it is unsettling to a thinking conservative. We've been down that road so many times before. Yet compared to McCain, Romney was a reliable conservative but the party nevertheless chose McCain. I posted yesterday in the wake of McCain's calling for bipartisanship on healthcare reform that Senator McCain would greedily eat a steaming pile of dog excrement if one sprinkled a little extract of bipartisanship on it. Yet, McCain was a war hero and that counts a lot among us conservatives who vote in primaries.
We still have time and if the Democrats led by Obama persist in their gihad against the Constitution and the American way of life, a Republican/conservative paladin will emerge because politics and history abhor a vacuum.
