Nice try.

– a lost war

– a tanking economy

– a series of gay sex scandals

– a series of corruption scandals that led to the Democrats taking control of Congress.

I doubt Reagan could hold together the Reagan coalition under the present conditions…

The math is telling us McCain isn’t holding together the Reagan coalition.

Um…. duh.

Where have you been for the past 4 years?

27 percent of Republican primary voters voted against McCain, even though he’s got a lock on the nomination.

220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans, out 807,000 who voted, cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul. That’s more than the 215,000 voters that separated Hillary and Obama.

Paul, a staunch opponent of the Iraq war, lured even more than Huckabee, who drew right-wing Christians.

The Democrats beat Bush-Cheney in Pennsylvania by 205,000 votes in 2000 and 144,000 votes in 2004.

The math is telling us McCain isn’t holding together the Reagan coalition. The question for Republicans is, perhaps, could any candidate keep it together when a record number of Americans disapprove of the incumbent and say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Yes. Conservatives are wonderful. They never assign labels to people who disagree with them.

They would never accuse people who disagree with them of being, for example, elitist, or holier-than-thou or patronizing.

Conservatives are great because, when someone disagrees with them, they politely rebut the argument, rather than attacking the person who made the argument.

Your use of labels and the following post with explanation/rationalization thereof, exhibits one of the characteristics of liberals that repels me the most: the pathetic, patronizing, holier-than-thou attitudes of the far Left. Not only is everyone with differing opinions dead wrong, but they are assigned selective labels with negative connotations.
In other words, you exhibit in spades the “hot topic” of the week: ELITISM.

Guess what? Liberals do not know it all; they are not the only people who care about others (as well as pets, plants and the environment!); they are not the only people who think war is horrible (it IS, to be sure, but reality intrudes when it comes to self-defense in a world where human beings not only conceive of a plan to fly fuel-filled airplanes into buildings with the objective of killing unlimited numbers of people — the more the better — but also actually carry out such a plan without compunction), etc.

The fact is, none of us has it ALL right (no pun intended), and that’s why public “conversations” and sharing of ideas is important. The problem is, too many people have moved so far to the extremes and exhibit zero tolerance toward others’ opinions. The fact is, this country was founded on the basis of tolerance – i.e. the Pilgrims came here to be allowed to worship as they chose, and they resolved to respect others’ rights to do so. When our Constitution was later written — it was designed to encourage and sustain the exchange of ideas, while allowing us to actually create and run a viable government for the public good based on the vote of the majority. We’re all not always happy with the result, but we must accept it. We’re able to do so with the knowledge that the status quo changes as opinions change over time and through experience.

We’re all different, and though we may agree and/or think alike on some subjects, we’re going to disagree on others. Likewise, it’s absurd to expect to find a candidate who meshes exactly with all of our own personal ideals. Pick your priorities and stand by them — and don’t bite yourself — or all the rest of us — in the butt by withholding votes out of spite

Most anti-tax amoralists consider it an economic growth issue. Lower taxes stimulate growth and discourage wasteful spending, is the idea.

There are, of course, libertarians who consider taxes immoral period. Their reasoning tends to be that the government simply has no right to ask individuals to pay for services they may not actually directly receive. Taxes are theft, is the idea.

I’m wondering what you consider “high” taxes. And when you say “high” do you mean relative to government spending?

I know I view it that way.