will a true moderate be a serious contender for the gop nomination?

[pbrower2a]

The Hard Right has largely expelled the moderates in the GOP. Aside from the two Senators from Maine (who might as well be Democrats), the moderates in the GOP who remain are... old. The moderates got their political reputations before Karl Rove took over the GOP.

The 2008 Republican National Convention demonstrated that even if the least Hard Right of the Presidential candidates would win the nomination, the Hard Right controlled the Party. When I consider that John McCain won't be the GOP nominee for President, then all that I can see is the Hard Right.

John McCain was the strongest candidate that the Republicans could offer in 2008. In 2012 the Republicans are unlikely to run a war hero -- but they will run an ideologue who can only fail if Obama is at all successful.  

[pbrower2a]

John McCain might have lost in a closer election had:

1. He not made the quixotic, and ultimately futile, efforts to win Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

2. He not picked the shrill, but intellectually-lightweight and polarizing Sarah Palin.

3. The Hard Right not taken over the GOP.

The fourth is significant. Gordon Smith, Elizabeth Dole, and Norm Coleman might still be Senators, and Arlen Specter might still be a Republican.  Such would have kept the President's pet health-care legislation from passing; the President wouldn't have the Senate votes that he needed for stopping the filibuster. 

A moderate might win the nomination in 2008, but the Hard Right would show him who was the real boss.  Americans weren't sure whether they were getting a greatly-changed and somewhat-penitent leader or a weakened President who would have to watch his back due to intrigues by powerbrokers from the recent past.