...will the GOP blame their loss on nominating a (by GOP standards) moderate?
I can't say what they WILL do. I can only offer what many conservative Republicans said would happen when they were opposing McCain in the primaries. Limbaugh, Savage and the rest of those pea-brains said "our party loses whenever it nominates a centrist". They would cite Ford in 1976, H.W. Bush in 1992 (they say he only won in 88 because Dukakis was so awful) and Dole in 1996. They further suggest that the farther right the candidate is -- the better his chance of winning. Nixon in 68 and 72, Reagan in 80 and 84 and The Decider in 00 and 04.
They might be on to something. Moderate Republicans tend to be intelligent, analytical and prone to handling complex problems comprehensively. Like most Democrats do. They sometimes even arrive at very similar conclusions as Democrats, though often -- because they are good at "nuance" -- they can manage to address complex problems with a combination of government and private sector initiative. The American public however is conservative. Joe and Suzy Sixpack like them some simple answers to complex problems. They prefer not to think too hard, sacrifice too much or move out of their own personal comfort zone. When they say they like a candidate who they can have a beer with, they mean -- "We don't like big words, long sentences with lots of syllables or any solution that might require us to do our part."
A Colin Powell, a Gerald Ford or a Margaret Chase-Smith would likely irritate the hell out of most voters -- assuming they remained true to their centrist principles.
John McCain is a bit harder to pin down. In the case of Nixon, you have a slippery fellow who campaigned from the hard right and yet -- aside from Vietnam -- pretty much governed from the center or center-right. H.W. Bush campaigned from the right, but governed from the center. The Decider campaigned from the hard right in the primary, from the center in the general and has governed -- well, if you can call it "governing" -- from the hard right on war, from the right on social issues and from God knows where, fiscally.
What will McCain do? His Senate record and his 2000 Presidential run suggest a man who will campaign from the center and govern from the center. His primary season has been pretty much hard right, however. Until just about now. So what kind of Republican will take office in 2009? With Democrats likely to gain seats in both houses, I have to believe it will be a McCain who will govern from the center. LOL -- maybe from the "hard center". The problem is Iraq. It, and all the corollary issues like torture, make it much harder to know what to expect. So what if McCain governs from the center environmentally, on domestic human rights and so forth? Is he going to keep our troops in a war they should never have been in in the first place? And is he likely to start a new war, on a new front? I honestly don't know. You can be sure I will feel a sense of relief when Beelzebush is finally exorcised from the Oval Orifice. And McCain will be a welcome change. My hope is that Mac will be infinitely more than a slight improvement. My worry is that that's all he will be.
