Will the GOP eventually bite the bullet and start nominating "moderates?"

[Lunar]

With Crist, Frazier, Guiliani, Simmons, Kirk, Gerlach etc. I think the GOP is attempting on doing a better job than usual this cycle.  Some of them won't run, but I don't see TOO many electable moderates going unnoticed

[Lunar]

With Crist, Frazier, Guiliani, Simmons, Kirk, Gerlach etc. I think the GOP is attempting on doing a better job than usual this cycle.  Some of them won't run, but I don't see TOO many electable moderates going unnoticed

Gerlach isn't really a moderate and Rudy isn't running for anything.

Fair enough, I just meant that they were being recruited.

[Lunar]

We did, John McCain, look how that worked out.

Agree. We tried the "moderate" in 2008, and that was an EPIC FAIL.

WHY, WHY DIDN'T WE NOMINATE TANCREDO!

[Lunar]

Actually Lunar, I didn't like any of the 2008 candidates, the GOP deserved to lose.

For all of the bitchin' about McCain supporting the financial bailout, regardless of how you feel about it, if McCain opposed it, Obama would have opposed it as well and he would have done no better.  It'd hard to believe many populists started voting for Obama when they were angry at both candidates for supporting the Wall Street bail out.

I don't remember McCain's campaign campaigning on moderatism at all, for all of your "EPIC FAIL" comments.  He switched from opposing drilling in ANWR to "drill baby drill" on far more sketchy areas than ANWR.  He was more pro-war than any other GOP candidate in the field.  He didn't have evangelism as his schtick, but he didn't rebuke them like he did eight years ago and instead actively sought them out and made one of them his VP.  He rejected his own pro-immigration platform and adopted one counter to his past beliefs and stood by that throughout the election.  I have a hard time believing that just because McCain wasn't the most right-wing candidate available in some respects that he somehow was a moderate and his loss showed that a moderate viewpoint on conservatism, whatever that means, is an, let me quote you, "EPIC FAIL"

[Lunar]

Actually Lunar, I didn't like any of the 2008 candidates, the GOP deserved to lose.

For all of the bitchin' about McCain supporting the financial bailout, regardless of how you feel about it, if McCain opposed it, Obama would have opposed it as well

Based on what evidence?

Neither would say what their position was until the other came out and said it.

They announced their support in a *joint conference* -- how often does that happen on the issues during a political campaign?  It was a toxic issue among both sides' political bases.

[Lunar]

He did reach out to hard-right fundies like Hagee and Dobson while in 2000 he called them "agents of intolerance" but McCain never really beat the abortion drum or the pro-life more than he had previously.  Part of the reason why McCain did poorly was that all he really cares about is foreign policy and earmarks, and the scope of the economic problems we were facing went beyond earmarks...

Probably the biggest argument in Smash's favor is the Palin pick.  But at the time, McCain apparently was more interested in her ant-establishment political persona taking on the corrupt Murkowski and Knowles status quo up there.