[Zhaun's_Shade]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

That's just it. Aside from taxes and Notbeingjohnkerry Bush was never impressive to me, and to many others in the republican party. McCain is like Bush in that he doesn't fit all the conservative qualifiers, but McCain is essentially a baseline republican who fails on social issues, whereas Bush is a social conservative who fails on all the other baseline issues.

The thing republicans understand is that the American people can handle half of the conservative "checklist" at a time. They could handle Bush's social conservatism because he packaged himself as a compassionate(read nanny state) republican. Now they can handle McCain's candidacy because, while he remains true on national security and fiscal matters, he doesn't shove his nose up their ass on social issues. Republicans basically understand if we ever nominated our "perfect" candidate he would scare people and not get elected.

The democrats on the other hand seem to find someone as close to their rote beliefs as possible. That's why you end up with only Southern democrats winning the presidency(you can include Gore if you want) who don't come off as complete nutjob lefties and who appeal to the country as a whole. Instead you nominate the first and third most liberal senators in the country. Or Kerry(who was top 5) and a trial lawyer. Or Dukakis and Bentsen.

Why you don't just find a nice, moderate, southern governor to win the white house and let Pelosi and Reid ramrod your agenda through I'll never know, but I appreciate the decision not to.

People want strong + moderate. Republicans pull that off even when our strong is a functioning retard(Bush) and our moderate sang bomb bomb Iran. Democrats don't seem to be able to pull this off.

So you're saying Democrats lose because they run on what they actually believe and the Republicans win because they pander?