The Race To Be The Least Worst Republican Candidate

I agree with Matthew Yglesias, it's hard to imagine ANY of these Republican candidates actually being the standard-bearer for their party. How could a bench get so thin in just a matter of a few years?

Giuliani's pro-choice and pro-gay views are fairly well-known at this point. To some extent, however, this only scratches the surface of his un-nominability. Compatible with both his record as a social liberal and his record as an authoritarian, Giuliani was a supporter of New York City's draconian gun laws. Moreover, he was an enthusiastic enforcer of these laws. The ugly truth is that the ex-mayor's record of tension with African-American New Yorkers is probably an asset in a GOP primary. But it's important to note that one major locus of these tensions was the Giuliani-era NYPD's affection for the combined NAACP/NRA nightmare of frequent, random, seemingly racially targeted stop-and-frisk searches of citizens not under suspicion of a specific crime in hopes of finding guns to confiscate [...]

What's more, people forget this, but the same factors likely to hinder Giuliani with the base won't help in a general election, either. This far out, you need to ignore the polls and think about how an actual campaign will play out. A thrice-married occasional cross-dresser with a penchant for seizing guns while turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants who also thinks cutting taxes on the rich is the be-all and end-all of economic policy isn't going to inspire anyone to wonder what's the matter with Kansas. Next to Giuliani, everyone looks like the candidate for values voters.

But none of the alternatives look any better. Mitt Romney is the most freakishly transparent liar I've ever witnessed. His party is desperately reliant on playing the Christian card on election day, but most traditionalist Christians deny that his religion counts as Christianity. He can't decide which state he's from, invested major resources in barely winning a Conservative Political Action Committee straw poll last weekend, and, for his trouble, managed to snag the endorsement of Ann Coulter at the same time she was calling John Edwards a "faggot."

Then there's McCain. To the kind of liberal who spent 2002 fantasizing about McCain beating Bush in '04 on the Democratic ticket, his pathetic decline is probably a sad story. To me, it's more like a funny one -- like when that guy slipped and fell down a flight of stairs and it all looked very painful but he was a huge jerk anyway. McCain is old. And sick. And obviously so. He has the misfortune of being both the most conservative candidate in the race and the one most hated by conservatives. His website makes it look like he's campaigning for Führer. Worst of all, George W. Bush's Iraq policy is so crazy that it's managed to ruin McCain's devilishly clever positioning on Iraq.

Quite a rogue's gallery, isn't it?

I mean, the lead authoritarian right now for the Republican nomination is a guy who has humiliated his ex-wife and kids so much that his own son won't campaign for him. And he's the one evangelicals LIKE the most, although Richard Land today basically called him unaceptable. McCain is so nervous that he's losing his grip on a nomination he considers his birthright that he rushed to announce on David Letterman without informing any of his advisers, which outraged some so much that they quit his campaign.

It's getting to the point where I half-expect the Republicans to nominate "None of the Above." Or Michael Savage, if the great patriot Jesus' General is successful.