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Romney and Huckabee were just as bad. But their were plenty of better candidates like Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo. Even Guiliani was at least honest about the fact that he was a liberal unlike McCain, Romney, and Huckabee.
When you get some time take a look at the map for the 2008 Republican Primaries. Romney did terrible in the South. Huckabee did terrible outside the South. McCain was able to do well enough in the South to offset Huckabee and well enough everywhere else to win. The only places Romney did well in were Minnesota and the Rocky Mountain states.
a lot of misinformation and total bravo sierra in the posts in this thread.
I've heard that before - in fact, I heard it endlessly from conservatives between 2005 and 2008, when I pointed out that history pointed to John McCain as the 2008 nominee. "No chance!", was the all-but-inevitable bleat.
Quote:
thompson would have been an excellent choice, but he got in the race late and with NO energy behind his campaign. tancredo was viewed by many as too extreme, and gulliani was too liberal and had too much baggage. so basically it came down to mccain, romney, and huckabee, and with romney and huckabee splitting the conservative vote, mccain took the rest and mopped the floor. had romney or huckabee not been in the race, it is very possible that mccain would not have gotten the republican nomination.
Right, right. Mitt Romney, who was loudly pro-choice, pro-stem cell research and pro-mandatory health care in Massachusetts until he decided to run for President. Wow, what a staunch conservative...
Your styling of Romney as a 'true conservative' conveniently ignores his history as a social moderate, and your styling of Huckabee as a 'true conservative' conveniently ignores his history as not particularly conservative fiscally.
You have blinders on such that you just can't bring yourself to understand history and why John McCain won the nomination, so you invent all these reasons to excuse the Republican base for choosing a candidate you don't like.
You should stop making excuses and learn from what happened.
He won because he was the best candidate, it was a weak field to say the least. Sadly for McCain he was probably 8 years past his prime, he would have been a solid candidate in 2000 and a much better president than W.
That said once the economy tanked he was done, you can blame him or Palin all you want but really the tide had turned so rapidly that not even a clone of Reagan had a chance to beat Obama and the media hype machine that followed him.
Location: Jonquil City (aka Smyrna) Georgia- by Atlanta
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Voyageur
I've heard that before - in fact, I heard it endlessly from conservatives between 2005 and 2008, when I pointed out that history pointed to John McCain as the 2008 nominee. "No chance!", was the all-but-inevitable bleat.
Right, right. Mitt Romney, who was loudly pro-choice, pro-stem cell research and pro-mandatory health care in Massachusetts until he decided to run for President. Wow, what a staunch conservative...
Your styling of Romney as a 'true conservative' conveniently ignores his history as a social moderate, and your styling of Huckabee as a 'true conservative' conveniently ignores his history as not particularly conservative fiscally.
You have blinders on such that you just can't bring yourself to understand history and why John McCain won the nomination, so you invent all these reasons to excuse the Republican base for choosing a candidate you don't like.
You should stop making excuses and learn from what happened.
Don't you just freaking hate candidates like that? They are like a weather vane- they just point to which way the polls are blowing.
Because Republicans nominate Presidential candidates as follows:
a) The incumbent GOP President, if there is one seeking the nomination
Examples: 2004, 1992, 1984, 1976, 1972
If there is no such candidate, then
b) A candidate who previously ran for President but finished second either in the nomination race or the general election
Examples: 2008, 1996, 1988, 1980, 1968
If there is no such candidate, then
c) Someone around whom the GOP establishment coalesces
Example: 2000
In 2008, there was no a and John McCain was the only b. So they GOP nominated him. It's an established pattern over four decades.
Excellent observation. And while we can see some trends break (Germany should have won the World Cup), McCain made his case stronger by uttering words like: "Bomb, bomb, bomb... Iran!"
Because they KNEW they were going to lose....and needed somebody expendable, somebody they wouldn't want later....they chose well....
whew .. I feel so much better about it all now.
I thought that they chose McCain, because the DNC paid Obama more money to run on their ticket .. and the GOP had to settle for the sloppy seconds (McCain) ..
mccain actually ran a decent campaign. I was voting for Thompson, but he never connected with the average American. The question that we should be asking is ...
Why did Mccain pick Palin as VP?
Something not being appreciated is GOP party rules on delegate allocation most GOP primaries allocate the delegates as either winner take all by the state or winner take all by congressional district. In a GOP primary early in the campaign like 2008 when half a dozen candiates were in the running and spliting the vote 6 ways a candidate like McCain could take a state like Florida and all of its large haul of delegates with less than 30% of the vote. The other candidates got nothing. Things would have been a lot different if Romney and Huckabee and the others had walked away with the remaining 70% of FL delegates. The Democrats use a proportional system so a candidate like Obama who lost the Texas or PA primaries badly got 40 % of the delgates at stake.
For McCain he ran the table on Super Tuesday and by the end of that night nearly all the candidates except Huckabee dropped out. McCain basically had the nomination clinched in February 2008. On the Democratic side Obama and Clinton basically split the delegate count evenly on Super Tuesday and it wasn't until the last few primaries that Obama finally beat Clinton to the delegate margin needed to win the nomination.
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