So you seriously thought a guy who couldn’t even qualify for the primary ballots properly would stand a better chance of beating Obama?  Sorry, that’s just delusional. 

Some of the other Governors might have fared better – Daniels, maybe Palin, Perry if he hadn’t been late and had the back surgery – but after they were clearly out, Romney was the strongest remaining candidate.  Santorum or Gingrich might have fired up the base more, but neither one appeals much to the swing voters who will decide the election.  And the polling has shown this all along (with the occasional anomaly when someone broke out, which always turned out to be temporary).

Obama never draws 50% in those polls, either, even the ones where he led.  Job approval, handling of the economy, right track/wrong track numbers all show an incumbent in deep trouble.  America has already decided Obama doesn’t deserve reelection on his record; his only chance is to attack whoever is the nominee.

All they can attack Romney on is his success, his religion, and how he took his dog on vacation 30 years ago.  If he can’t beat Obama, it’s rather silly to believe anyone else in this year’s field could.

Even if Romney wins, America loses.  It’s just a matter of degree — or as Dave said: woop-de-skip.

Wow, all the Dems can attack Romney on are the things that are not just like Obama.  I don’t think some people understand the full implications there.

Well, yeah, but the very act of going through the motions of “well, Romney could win” (like that’s some big victory) is in a sense playing along with the idea that we aren’t [already lost].

I suppose it gives a person something to talk about, but that’s about it.  It’s discussing the events in the circus while trying to ignore that the bread is getting in mighty short supply (and forget about any freedom or liberty stuff).

Eh, might as well play along.

Mitt ended up the guy most acceptable to the ‘establishment’ this time around. But it wasn’t for lack of effort to stop that. Pawlenty and Perry failed to gain any traction with voters. Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan all declined to run despite some very heavy recruiting efforts (some of which did convince Rick Perry to run). John Huntsman for some reason decided to run as a liberal. He ended up the ‘establishment’ choice because no one else in the race was running a serious campaign.

Then we are doubly lost,10 to 20 percent of the “citizens” are against us to one degree or another. Of the 20 to 30% who are at least somewhat conservative 1% or less actually understand how bad things are, the arethest in way, think we’re crazy and are afraid we’re going to take away their dildo’s, medicare or food stamps.

Stacy,
You unknowingly (for lack of better words) stole my thunder in your response to the first commenter of what I was thinking as I read your above posted article and then the comments. There are too many either gullible, lazy and/or non noncomprehhensive morons that refuse to think for themselves And do their own research when it come to the electoral process of choosig a political candidate to support and vote for. Apparently they out number those of us who do think for ourselves and comprehend most if not all of what is said and done in governmental political electoral process. There may be no hope left for America and it’s Consttution after the 2012 General Election. Very few people care anymore. It will be too late when these people finally wake up and realize the prophetic words written and spoken in the Bible of the many ways the destruction of not only this Country but this World become a reality.

I think it’s not time for that yet.  The Tea Party, etc, is still too young.  A more promising route is to strengthen it in Congress and state governments first.  2010 was a great year for that.

But it’s more than just winning a couple of elections.  The other important thing that we saw in 2011 was a shift in the reported narrative, and who was driving it.  

Tea Party-esque candidates and discourse needs to become the norm, as opposed to all of the Progressive assumptions currently baked into the cake.  Look at how long it took Progressives to get Medicare.

I just hope we have enough time before nature and economics totally catches up with us.

 Ann Romney is an impressive woman. So was Dolly Madison. How’d that work out? http://tinyurl.com/6tbdy2s

Exactly. The men elected are a reflection of the electorate. America lost in 1865 and has been losing ever since.

It’s sad to watch good and thoughtful men like Mr. Tucker show just how pathetically they are grasping at straws.

We should start a campaign called ‘Don’t Get Out And Vote’.

If you stay informed on the issues facing this country, you have a duty to vote; if you don’t you have the equally important duty not to vote [it's the very least you can do].

Ann Romney appears to be a NICE lady…but I withhold being impressed by anything more than her niceness.

???

Going rogue with that vote is starting to look like an attractive option however.

Oh, that’s exactly what happened here.  The Tea Party came out of the gate hard and fast, looked promising, then the local GOP machine got its grubby mitts on it…no more local Tea Party chapter.
The only cold comfort is that the local donks can’t rouse much enthusiasm from their constituents either.  
Even the Ron Paul guys around here have largely given up too.  Nobody is gung ho for anybody; only the seriously hard core or the ones getting pay-offs from somewhere are doing anything — there are very few of those.

 I have intimacy issues.  Gimme back my mortar platoon.

Why bother asking?  The fiscons already answered.  Romney is the next GOP nominee, and its time for Operation Whig because some people can only be persuaded to reason and morality by power, and the next stop after that one, if it fails is the one with grapeshot, and not just a whiff of it either.

 I can’t fault you for supporting Cain as your first choice, I see your reasoning there as someone looking for an appeal to Tea Party conservatives. But where you messed up was backing Santorum instead of Bachmann when Cain floundered, ESPECIALLY if your purpose was-

“How to carry forward the populist spirit of the Tea Party movement?”

Of course its your right to support anybody you damn well please, but looking at things realistically, Santorum is a Tea Party conservative about like Barak Obama is an extreme Far Right Pro-Life evangelical.

It’s just too damn bad that blasted video of him dissing Protestants who use contraception didn’t come out between Perry’s first two horrible debate performances and the date of the Iowa caucuses. Richard “women should stay barefoot and pregnant and out of the fucking Oval Office” Vigarie and his goons might have swallowed their pride and supported her, then I wouldn’t find myself in the position of having to support Romney.

But, it is what it is.

 You obviously don’t live in TX, where he’s done just fine.

My suggestion for conservatives, when it comes to Romney, is think strategic.

We need to make something out of this crap sandwich we were handed by the Establishment.

We all agree that Romney is an unrepentant RINO. An untrustworthy opportunist who apparently just wants to be president so that he can be the ultimate CEO (much like Clinton just wanted to be president to be Captain Adulterer™).

We also would have to agree that, for all his faults, Mitt would not actively try to destroy America like the current cypher-in-chief. If anything, Romney may approach a post-Obama America kind of like he approached the Utah Olympics – something to be saved. Oh, he’ll do that by being a “smart” technocrat but he will act the white knight; it’s in his character (what little of it he apparently has).

So even though many despise the guy, he has the potential to not totally suck. But here’s the thing, he has to be forced to make some conservative campaign promises THAT HE KNOWS HE WILL HAVE TO FULFILL. He knows that GHWB doomed himself by promising “read my lips” and then reneging on that promise. He also knows that GHWB made that promise in order to get re-elected. Despite what Adj said at the top of this thread, swing voters DO NOT decide election, conservatives do.  Without them, no GOP nominee mades it into the WH.  
People wanted another term of Reagan and GHW Bush knew this. He just was too much of a wimp to follow through on his promise. I think Romney is of mildly stronger stuff than GHWB. He needs to make the promises necessary to get the conservative vote and then he needs to follow through on them or doom his chances for a second term. But if we just let him know in advance that “aw shucks, yeah, we’ll vote for you anyway”, then he has no motivation to do anything more than nominate a conservative running mate.

So, we need to let Romney know, in no uncertain terms, that we want him to actually make us some “severe” conservative campaign promises that he can’t break lest he become the next GHWB.

How?

Every liberty-minded poster in the conservative blogosphere needs to say they won’t vote for Romney unless he makes those promises. None of this “I’ll hate myself but I’ll vote for him anyway” stuff. NO! We just say, “sorry, not gonna do it unless you promise the following:”

The Romney fans will accuse us of throwing away our vote but to that I say, “au contraire”, we WILL vote for Romney if he promises a conservative agenda. If he doesn’t, then he is metaphorically dead to us.

The reason this has to happen is that we know that RINOs and their supporters are ignoramuses (ignorami?) and they have to be shaken out of their room temperature IQs long enough to recall a little history.

When the primaries winnow out the conservative candidates (as they almost always do), the establishment always says, “the grass-roots have no where else to go now – they will have to vote for the establishment candidate”. Of course, they always seem to forget how false this axiom is. That, in the case of Ford, GHWB, Dole, and McCain, enough conservatives ended yo making a choice to NOT vote for the RINO that said RINO got shown the dust-bin of history in the general.

IOW, the RINO wing of the party (the part that gives the GOP the nickname of the “stupid party”) always forgets that enough conservatives have historically made the choice to NOT vote for the moderate establishment squish to throw the election to the Dems.

So this time, we just need to remind Romney outright, that he’s the next Dole unless…

Nope.  Probably not.  But if you want to curtail the President’s power, that is what Congress is for.  Go help elect some good ones to the House and Senate.  

I am not defending Mitt as great, I am pointing out Obama is really bad.  

Love the thought; it’s a good one.
One problem: I live in IL (and not in a district that which will be aiming for greatness this election).
Literally, I have nobody to joyfully vote for except county clerk and the coroner (even the dogcatcher stinks).

Your premise that Romney is a RINO is false. He epitomises the GOP! This is the trap that conservatives habitually fall into. It’s like a woman who marries a man assuming she can change him into an ideal husband. It’s like conservative women thinking they can take the word feminism away from the left. It W.I.L.L. N.O.T. H.A.P.P.E.N.. Neither will making the GOP a conservative party.

Poppy cock. An interesting theory but false as I understand it. If I read you correctly you are asserting that if the democratic party could be taken over by the left with people like Harrington leading the charge then the GOP can be taken over by conservatives lead by for example a Demint or a Bachmann.
Here is the flaw in your concept. The democratic party had to go in the direction it did, if not Harrington and he was by no means alone, someone else would be remembered as instrumental in taking the democrats in a direction that they couldn’t not go in. Once the party became left of center the trajectory was set. When I state that there is no fundamental difference between Gene McCarthy or Ted Kennedy and Pol Pot that’s not hyperbole that all leftists are merely different points on an arc descending into serfdom and darkness that is because that trajectory is inexorable. In short the Democratic Party had to follow the path it did, it had and has no choice in the matter what so ever. Until and unless the Dem party is destroyed utterly as a relevant force in our political, cultural, social and economic lives there MUST be killing fields in the end.
While your hypothesis that the GOP could be taken over by conservatives given enough time the example of the constantly leftward direction of the Dems in no way supports that theory.