"The GOP can do better." I don't deny that that's generally true; but is it obviously so in this particular electoral cycle?

I suspect that the candidates who would make GOP primary voters ecstatic are waiting until 2012, understanding that they would be CRUSHED in the '08 general election.

I always thought Tom Ridge would be a good candidate. It bothers me that Newt Gingrich has high marks and he isn't even running (which may show you discontent with the current nominees).

But, I think Ridge was jaded by the current administration and realizes now is not the time.

Josh, I would have thought you smart enough not to buy into this nonsense. I've been trying to catalog all the particular charges I've seen and why not one of them merits any serious worry.

If Reagan could be accepted as a genuine conservative despite changing his view on abortion a mere one year before running for president in 1976, then why can't Romney be allowed to come over to the right side? It's as if consistently holding an evil view is better than realizing you were wrong and then demonstrating with your record as governor that you really mean your change of heart (which Reagan was never able to do). Bill Bennett about said as much earlier this week, which I just can't understand. Is changing your mind on something to accept the right view as bad as holding on stubbornly to a very wrong view?

It used to be that Republicans would accept people who changed their heart and allow for newcomers who have been won over to pursuing the conservative agenda. That period seems to be over, which means the Democratic party is going to be in control for a very long time. Either that or Republicans are going to be nominating liberals for the presidency, because everyone who has a chance will be afraid of becoming more conservative.

Mitt Romney is, without any doubt in my mind, the closest thing to a genuine conservative in the lineup for 2008 who has any chance at all of getting the nomination. But no candidate is ever going to be perfect. Reagan wasn't perfect. G.H.W. Bush certainly wasn't perfect. Even G.W. Bush isn't perfect. Mitt Romney would be fine as a Republican president, and he's given every reason to believe that he will continue the conservative direction his governorship took. I don't understand this vicious meme trying to represent one genuine change of mind and a few genuinely complex positions as if he's changed his mind on everything he can. It's even worse when people present him as wanting to have it both ways, as if he's still saying what he said back in 1994. This Romney flip-flop meme is thoroughly irrational.