The worst Republican is better than the best Democrat by a mile.
I'm not one of those crazy conservatives who might be faced with Guiliani/Hillary choice next year and decide to write in Ron Paul, instead.
But I'm not a one-issue voter. Some at this forum clearly are.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm always voting for the lesser of two evils because I've never found a candidate, who speaks out on the record on all issues, that I agree with 100%.
But if I wanted a candidate that I always agreed with, I'd run for office myself.
It's partly a question of time.
For instance, I felt comfortable criticizing Bush and the Republicans for offending their base when they did stupid things after the 2004 election, because even if I planned to vote for them anyway, I knew there would be many who would not. But for a month before the 2006 election I pointed out that, with the possible exception of Lincoln Chaffee, the only real choice was to get out and vote Republican.
So, I think we can discuss the strong and weak points of the candidates now, or say that McCain is simply unacceptable to us, or that we'd rather have Duncan Hunter.
But a year from now, the situation will be very different. If Giuliani is nominated, I would likely vote for him unless he repeats his really egregious support of stuff like partial birth abortion. Yet he needs to bring in that part of the base, because even if he doesn't lose my vote, he still will lose millions of other social conservative votes. For years, lots of Evangelicals thought that in this sinful world there wasn't much point in voting at all. They came out in force in 2004, but I think some stayed home in 2006, along with the libertarian discontents.
I honestly can't say at this point whether I would vote for Hillary or McCain if that's the choice we are given, because those two would be almost the worst choices possible. Hillary is evil and McCain is insane. But I can say that we should sort out the candidates without being overly influenced by what the left wing press says about them.
That's fine for the general election, but so many freepers have been saying for years to "vote for the most conservative candidate in the primaries, but then vote for whomever the nominee is in the general". Being that Hunter is unarguably more conservative and that Rudy, Mitt and McCain really aren't that different, why are these SAME EXACT people going against what they've been saying for years? Why aren't they supporting the most conservative candidate?
I really suspect that many of these people were lying all of those times.