Originally Posted by ijusluvit

It's probably true that Romney will be the nominee. Ironically, the candidate who is least appealing to passionate and conservative Republicans, but whom they are more and more grudgingly accepting. It's been a continual negative process of elimination. No one but Romney has been able to stand up to the frantic vetting by everyone who owns a keyboard.

We have reached the time where the measuring stick for the Presidency is the candidate who has the fewest number of negatives in their image. It doesn't matter what they are really like, or what qualities they might possess, of the potential of their character, it's only about their "faults" or "drawbacks". Those things still include their race, religion, gender and size, not with everyone mind you, but with many. The rest is about their past. We've almost developed a precise point scale for incidents, experiences and statements which are negative deductions from the candidates images. One by one, the Republican parade of candidates has piled up too many negative points, except Romney, whose point deductions are mostly for his philosophy. But that is the least important area to the largest number of voters. So what if some passionate, conservatives get physically ill with the prospect of his nomination.

Being a Mormon is a small negative, but, the straight, good-looking, somewhat experienced, middle-of-the-road white guy overcomes that. All in all, that fits our stereotype of 'presidential'. My guess is that at the present time all the Republican power brokers would agree with the above and that nothing will change things unless new ways are found to tear up Romney's image. If that happens, where they would go from there is almost anyone's guess.

So maybe it would be better to debate how Romney would be better than Obama, and either's chances of success working with a split Congress. How will Romney get support for legislative proposals when he's far too liberal to suit a good number of his own party?