Still Searching for the Ideal Republican Candidate: Conservative, Interested, Electable

UPDATE IV: "If the Republican presidential candidates fail to offer substance, it's because they're giving the public what it wants -- empty calories." Read The Atlantic, Gluttons for Punishment: Blame Voters for the Dismal GOP Field, which notes:

"So if those GOP debates have reeked of rhetorical homogeneity, he suggests, maybe it's because the campaigns have been hearing the same things in their focus groups and polling of, yes, real people.

As with all-you-can-eat buffets, the political system has long ago seen the utility of producing and consuming empty political calories."

UPDATE III: With campaign promises like $2 a gallon gas, even one of the the Republican presidential candidates knows that "two of his major rivals were 'extreme' and 'unrealistic.'" Read The New York Times, Huntsman Calls His Rivals `Unelectable'.


UPDATE II: "You call tell how unhappy Republicans are by reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the one-stop shop for conservative orthodoxy. It fretted on Monday that Republicans and independents are 'desperate' for a unifying candidate, and that if 'the current field isn’t up to that, perhaps someone still off the field will step in and run.'" Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s summer of discontent.


UPDATE: Is he the one?:

"The entire campaign has been about the Republican Party searching for a candidate who is (a) capable of running a strong race against Barack Obama, (b) reliably conservative, and (c) actually interested in running." Read The New York Times, Pondering Perry’s Electability, which sums it up with this graph: