Bullseye! Awesome post CincyRR.
From another Cincy area conservative.
It is called the vetting process, also sometimes called the primaries. We have a habit of doing that in GOP unlike the Kenyan socialist who received almost none of that.
I have noticed that the tendency on these threads is not to extoll the virtues of the candidate of the poster's choice, but to throw mud at every other candidate.
Throwing mud is easy. It takes little thought. All one has to do is to pull some quote out of context and then call the candidate a RINO and you get praise from all quarters here on Free Republic.
The problem as I see it is that the problem with the Federal Government is systemic and quite frankly it is going to take someone with an intimate knowledge of the system to begin the process of fixing it. Gingrich knows the system. On Free Republic that makes him THE problem. But in reality of all the candidates he is the most likely to be able to FIX the problem.
It didn't happen overnight and it's not going to get fixed in my lifetime. But sending someone in to fix the system who has no clue how the system works is not smart in my opinion.
This is one of the principle reasons I am currently leaning in the direction of Newt.
I think we are starting to see a shift as we are getting closer to actually voting. Newt has shot up in the polls because he is articulate and is as sharp as a razor when dealing with the lib media. He has a lot of flaws and is hardly a small govt conservative but he is better than Romney because he is good on the social issues and the base knows it. Also, the candidate that can respond well to the negatives will probably end up being our nominee.
I think as the field of candidates narrows and all the negatives are well known the candidates electability in the general election improves. My hope is that Perry bounces back in SC & FL. He is the small govt conservative in the race.