Who Do The Republicans need to nominate to win in 2012?

[Badger]

We need to start working on Aaron Schock. John Thune would be another decent candidate. Get them ready for the national stage. Palin would have been good, but she was thrust on the national stage so quickly, and didn't have time to adjust, which resulted in awful interviews making her look like demonstrating she is an idiot. I mean, before those interviews, her approval ratings were higher than Obama or McCain's. I think she can still be a good candidate, if she puts herself around the right people and works on her interviewing skills.

Corrected

[Badger]

The GOP needs someone who understands the last two election drubbings was the voters rejecting Bush's policies rather than him personally. I'm endlessly amused by how many conservative politicians and pundits acknowledge W's presidency as a failure, but when asked what policies they prescribe and it's unerringly identical to the last four years. The next nominee needs to understand the majority does not want Bush/Cheney redeux or even (gasp!) Reagan.

The ultimate GOP candidate needs the following:

1) An actual and genuine belief that the federal government has a role in providing services and benefits for the nation beyond national defense/border security and prisons. Someone who believes being a "compassionate conservative" is a real governing philosophy, not a campaign tag to woo moderate swing voters and discard a week after inauguration.

2) Someone with the business/governing background to reinforce their credentials as a fiscal conservative. They need to be able to effectively argue to the middle that while the general idea of the stimulus, etc. is OK, the Obama administration and liberals in congress mismanaged such efforts into a tax-wasting ineffective porkfest. "I can do what Obama tried to do, but without so much waste and expense".

3) At least acceptable to moderates on social issues, if not an actual moderate themselves. It's a canon of politics that the GOP nominee for the next couple decades will be pro-life and opppose gay marriage. But they will be much more palatable to voters if their positions defer to the states to choose laws ("repeal Roe v. Wade") as opposed to supporting constitutional amendments to ban abortion nationwide in all cases and legislatively divorcing thousands of gay/lesbian couples who will have already married under state laws. The nominee can oppose gay marriage (hell, even Obama currently, officially, does too), and even personally oppose civil unions (unlike say Jon Huntsman) as long as they at least concede the right of states to enact such measures.

Of the big names floating around, only Huckabee comes close on the first point--though his continued support of that nutty national sales tax scheme would undercut his standing here--but does poorly on the second point and epic fails the third. Romney, and to a lesser degree Palin, is fine on the second point, but utterly fails the first and third. For that matter the vast majority of likely GOP nominees fail the first point and honestly believe the only problem the GOP faces is a need for "rebranding" and a "public image makeover", not fundamental changes in policy and ideology. Michael Steele is the only the most public and laughable example of this mindset, but it's deeply ingrained throughout the entire party.

The only GOP name coming to mind that closest fits all three points is Charlie Crist. And even there his glowing public endorsement of Obama's stimulus would come back to haunt him anytime he tried arguing point #2--and not just in the Republican primaries either. This also assumes Marco Rubio won't upset him in the primary next year and effectively end his career, or that there aren't any other skeletons in his (ahem!) "closet".