It seems like just yesterday that John McCain was the “not Romney.”
And has it really been 4 years since we really first grasped how bigoted and crazy the GOP base had become?
I’m old enough to remember a time before Cain, Bachmann, Newt, and Perry we had a whole roster of other “not Romneys” who had their day in the sun including Fred Thompson, Rudy Guliani, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback.
It is as if the GOP has been boiled down to two bricks of highly condensed hatred. One brick of hate for President Obama, and one brick of hate for Mitt Romney. And make no mistake, Republicans know how much they suck. Listen to the baleful tone of this journalistic heavy sigh courtesy of The New Republic:
Take a moment to imagine the following GOP presidential field: two popular, former big-state governors (one a former U.S. Treasury secretary, the other a hero of the conservative movement), two Hall of Fame senators (one of them a former vice-presidential nominee, the other a future White House chief of staff), a former CIA director, ambassador, and party chair, and a couple of miscellaneous House members. Not bad, right? That’s your Republican candidate field in 1980: Ronald Reagan, John Connally, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, John Anderson, and Phil Crane.