You are amusing and tragic at the same time. Republicans haven't done their homework...again. We keep losing the contest of brains, stamina, maturity, and ideas with people such as Dole and the apparently endless supply of Bushs along with some of the other goofs you have mentioned. The Democrats and the radical left fill the vacuum. Now people are seizing upon this new Rice character arising out of nowhere. What must happen, will happen.
First off, as far as talent and brains go, I would stack our people up against theirs anytime. Well, except for Trent Lott. It was that whole male cheerleader thing.
Look, the fact is, the name of the game is to sieze the center and hold it. People like Alan Keyes or Patrick J. Buchanan could never understand that. Everytime Pat Buchanan screamed "Culture War" (even though he was correct), average voters got scared. Visions of truckfulls of overweight guys dressed in brown swinging truncheons right and left filled the addled minds of the mushy middle. People like Bill Clinton took advantage of these latent fears of the "extreme right". A serial liar like him could win elections because he was shameless and was able to talk in code.
Democrats understand that to elect liberals they have to talk in a misleading code about "values" and try to hew as close as possible to the brain dead middle class moms of this world. Watch the New Jersey election: they'll be talking about "New Jersey values" as the Trenton Machine tries to isolate and define Doug Forrester.
This is basic, fundamental, propaganda. It goes back to the two pioneers of Twentieth Century propaganda, Paul Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work for Hitler is acknowledged as some of the greatest pieces of persuasive work in history. The object of the exercise for Democrats is to use Geobbels' technique of making meaning out of meaninglessness to their advantage.
For instance; people in thier heart of hearts know that George W. Bush doesn't want to "do away" with Social Security. There's a national consensus that has existed since the New Deal about the subject. But this doesn't stop Democrats from practicing Goebbels' technique. Leave aside the merits of the Social Security ponzi scheme for a moment: people want it to be there and Democrats are always willing to tell the electorate that Republicans are going to throw old ladies out on the street.
Democrats, like the Nazis before them, count on the fact that there are more than enough stupid people to go around. There are plenty of stupid people in their base, of course, but what they really are banking on is the ability to get the independent swing voter to believe in simpleminded propaganda and cast the stupid vote.
And that's easy for them to do. Anyone who has not made up their minds by late October after a full year of campaigning and still needs to be convinced is, by definition, not only stupid but a monumental f&%ing idiot. Add to this fact that these last minute swing voters usually think of themselves as "high minded" independents and you see how they can be taken to the cleaners by a good agitprop campaign. Rubes like that are easy pickins' for the Clinton Democrats.
We can push conservatism as far as it will go, but what we cannot do is allow ourselves to be flanked on the left so that the Rat candidate can take the middle. A Republican candidate, to succeed, needs to be both right of center and reasonable in his conservatism. It is how Reagan succeeded and why Buchanan failed. This is an issue that is larger than Rice or whomever else happens to be running in '08. It's a question of political dominance going into the second decade of the 21st Century.
Be Seeing You,
Chris