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But conservatives enabled that by making excuses for Bush rather than opposing him. We didn't see any serious opposition to Bush until the immigration thing reached the forefront.
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President Bush has been pretty good on a lot of issues and pretty bad on others. On spending conservatives have been making noise for a long time and it is one of the reaons that Republicans lost control of the House and Senate.
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Even today, it seems that small government principles are less important to conservatives than social issues.
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That depends on which conservatives you're talking about. If you mean the Mike Huckabee wing of the party you're absolutly right. If you mean the Giuliani wing of the party that is incorrect. Remember, the party is a coalition, and different parts of that coalition place different values on different parts of the party platform.
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Your idea of major issues is different from mine. I'll also note that on those issues you consider major, the Republican party is divided. That's why I say those issues arne't core Republican issues. If they were, they wouldn't be fighting over them.
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Taxes
Judges
Terrorism
Immigration
Stem Cells (although not one I personally care about)
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You've got it right on. And McCain is a social conservative, he is an economic conservative, and he is most definitely a foreign policy conservative. The issues where he disagrees with the base on are issues that don't comfortably fall into those three categories. Where does McCain-Feingold fit in? How about immigration? You could ding him on his lack of enthusiasm for supply side economics, but that's something that is fairly recent to the party anyway and which large portions of the party never accepted in the first place(it wasn't a Democrat that called it "voodoo economics".
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McCain has pieces of each leg, but has serious weaknesses in all three cases. For fiscal conservatives he's been weak on taxes. For foreign policiy conservatives he's weak on terrorism and intelligence gathering. And for social conservatives he's weak on steam cells. Couple that with his antagonistic approach to his base and you've got a recipe for disaster.
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Romney would lose by 20 points. No one is buying his change of positions. The Romney that governed Massachusetts could have won over many Democrats and independents. The fire breathing conservative Romney doesn't even convince enough conservatives to vote for him while alienating moderates and liberals.
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Maybe. I think he stacks up better against Obama then McCain does and worse against Clinton. And Romney has been carrying conservatives.
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McCain is the only chance the party has. The republican brand name is hurting. The choices are to lose, or to win with an almost Republican.
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Yes, he is a chacne for the party. BUt not for conservativism. For conservatives he's marginally better then the Democratic opposition and for a lot of us that marginal difference isn't worth supporting the party. When the party wants to choose a standard bearer that doesn't hate the base give us a call.
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His GW plan does not involve spending taxpayer dollars. It works through regulation, and light regulation at that.
Immigration won't be a problem if McCain doesn't allow them to be eligible for government benefits.
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Which his amnesty bill did. Do we really believe that as President McCain is going to amnesty the illegal but deny them foodstamps, hostpital visits, social security, education assistance, and more? I call shennanagins.
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