There's no question that on many if not most domestic issues McCain would be horrible. Ghastly, in fact.

But there's no question either that he would finish the job in Iraq, continue beating al-Qaeda utterly senseless, and that his SCOTUS picks would be 1,000 times more conservative than Hillary's.

If he's the next president the best case scenario -- IMO -- is that he quickly gets an opportunity to replace Stevens and Ginsburg (and perhaps Souter too, who wants to retire), he mops up in Iraq, the GOP Senate blocks him on domestic stuff, then he steps down and doesn't seek re-election because of age/health, turning things over to his Veep, hopefully someone along the lines of Santorum and not at all someone like Lindsay Graham.

One thing's for certain, however: If he gets the GOP nomination he'll be the next president. He easily would defeat Obama (if Obama somehow pulls off the upset) and he absolutely would mop the floor with Hillary in the general. Hillary's ceiling, in fact, against McCain, would be less than Kerry received.

Cheers,
Jay

I really disagree that McCain is a shoo-in for the White House should he win the nomination. There may be a number of disenchanted core conservatives who will consider sitting this one out if a socially liberal candidate such as McCain is the nominee. He is not the best debator in the world and does represent the establishment in this apparent tidal wave of "change" that Americans supposedly want in November. I hope Republicans think long and hard about McCain's positions before casting votes this week.

Yeah, I wouldn't be picking out curtains for the White House just yet. I do think McCain would have an excellent chance of winning, but any Republican will be swimming against the tide to win this year, if for no other reason than we've held the White House for two consecutive terms. Since WWII, that's only happened once, 1981-1993.

Add to that historical resistance the completely insane public attitude toward the economy, which has been uniformly negative during one of the best periods of sustained growth in our history, with low inflation and low unemployment, and our nominee will not be the favorite going into the campaign.

Fortunately, the Democrats promise to help us, as usual, by nominating an extremely flawed candidate themselves.

Which brings us back to the old 'possum wisdom from Pogo: "We has met the enemy, and he is us." Republicans may not turn out in force to back our nominee because each of the potential candidates has weaknesses with one or more factions of our coalition. If we don't support our nominee, it won't matter how many independents he can attract.

So, which Republican is our best nominee? I loved Fred and even got to speak with him for a few minutes back in the fall, but I quickly realized he wasn't going to happen. Huckabee won me over as the only candidate who has crossover appeal and still could hold the base. Romney is so... manufactured. I agree with you wholeheartedly about the independents being worthless if McCain cannot turn out all conservatives. We are facing utter disaster in November (the Democrats will likely take both houses of Congress for two years) if Republicans cannot unite immediately.

Maybe Huckabee can pull a surprise in Michigan and use the momentum in SC. Or maybe Rudy will emerge in Florida. I still hope Republicans will realize at the last moment that McCain is not the answer.

I wish I had the answer. It's uphill for anyone.

I think Giuliani, McCain, or Thompson probably have the best chances in the general election - the first two for cross-party/independent appeal which could help in the closer blue states, Thompson by rallying the base. But Romney and Huckabee could possibly win it, too, although they have some bigger built-in targets on their backs.

Our best hope, and secret weapon, remains the flawed and unqualified candidate the Democrats will put up (no matter who of the top three), and their actual policy positions which won't command broad support either. It's no way to win an election, but it worked well enough in '88, '00, and '04 when we won against the odds going in.