“...but candidates who are spun as a “sure thing” often can’t win...”
This is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL. McCain was the PERFECT Republican candidate. He worked across the aisle time after time, stuck it to conservatives - in short did EVERYTHING PERFECT - he was the perfect moderate, a voice of reason in troubling times. Then what happened...
...they (the establishment) saw he didn’t have a prayer against the most radical candidate in US history, so they put Sarah on the ballot. Initially that helped a lot, but then the media got to work on her (and McCain), and by the time November came, those “independent” voters trickled away, turned off by Sarah...and it was over.
In the end, the Republicans lost, in part, because they were FORCED to put a conservative on the bottom half of the ticket, just to get some enthusiasm going...and the bottom half of the ticket became the issue with independents (although McCain would have been clobbered anyway). The same thing nearly cost Bush-41 his first election (with Quayle on the bottom half of the ticket).
The idea that we can run a moderate, like Perry, and then hope to balance him out with a conservative is INSANE. We’ll end up in the same mess as 2008.
Romney’s theory is that McCain failed because he was older and inarticulate. Perry is also an inarticulate RINO. Christie is articulate but more than overweight. But maybe a stunning RINO would work? And if he fails, it wouldn’t be because he was a rino but because he’s Mormon.
Rick has the conservative goods, the record to prove them and the screaming match leveled at him will become suspect, only after we finish courting candidates without the goods whose rise is based only on how well they throw rocks at Rick Perry. The proof that conservatism is alive and actually on duty is in only one candidate whose got the record to prove it. Rick’s got and they want it. Overeach and the fiction flacking with half truths will eventually meet its Waterloo. Voters catch on to the killing field over time.