We all need a break from talking about the same old JIM THORPE day in and day out.

just because they are centrist as far as the republicans are concerned doesn't mean they aren't hard core right as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

It's the primaries and the Congressional Republicans that give off the impression of extremism, rather than the presidential candidates themselves. I think plenty of people would've voted for McCain if it hadn't been for his nomination of Sarah Palin. And Romney might have won, if he hadn't been so compelled to lie non-stop from the moment he declared his candidacy. Yes, all candidates swing to the base in the primaries, but Romney had to do so many backflips he might as well have joined the circus. The only thing that he had going for him was that he wasn't Obama.

Do I have a faulty memory, or did the Republican primaries not used to be as wacky? Pre-Tea Party, back in the Bush vs. Gore days, didn't you just get the usual run of Bible thumpers and country clubbers at these things? I wasn't really conscious of US politics in the Clinton vs. Dole days, but was Ross Perot ever as weird Michelle "We've Been Infiltrated By Islamofascists" Bachmann and Herman "My Tax Plan Is From Sim City" Cain?

Perot wasn't the republican nominee anyway.

My memory of that era is too hazy to pick out what Bob Dole's primary fight was like. The Bush vs McCain primary was brutal but it wasn't a completely untempered race to the right so far as I recall.

Until recently the primaries have not gotten the coverage that they have gotten in the last 3 or 4 elections. So you did not see the more fringe elements from either party. Usually the coverage didn't happen until there were only two people left.

Good point. Bush and McCain actually represented different branches of the Republican party and weren't merely racing to show (or fake) who was the most right wing. That's what was missing this time around. The only person this time round who didn't contort himself into ultra-orthodoxy was Jon Huntsman, whose campaign was obscure and short-lived.

Imagine if the Democratic primaries became some kind of competition to show who was the biggest vegan anti-globalization Noam Chomsky-quoting pacifist. It would be absurd.

I started paying attention to politics around the time of Bush vs Gore. There has always been some wackiness but I would say there is no way it was as out of hand as this time around. Bush won over enough centrists with the slogan of "compassionate conservatism", selling himself as a moderate.

That would have been his Father, the other Bush. Dubya simply wasn't Gore.

No, the term was around for a long time before but it was GWB who made it part of the everyday political language. From Wiki

As perpetual optimist for the Democratic Party I'm going to point out something that should be obvious and isn't being talked about.

State and Local Democrats have much, MUCH stronger fundamentals in the alleged Red States than people give them credit for, most especially in Appalachia but also in the South, the Plains and the Northern Center where Democratic Senators pulled off major upsets. We've seen it elsewhere. Indiana for Obama in 2008; Kansas for Sebelius; West Virginia, on paper a GOP stronghold holding a more or less total dominance for the Dems in statewide offices; the same story in Kentucky and to a lesser extent Montana; GOP inroads in Pennsylvania and the Midwest are very tenuous and could easily be rolled back; and Arizona and Texas have the awakening Hispanic giant poised to rise up and seize control; even Wyoming had a two term Democratic governor until 2010 and Alaska of all places swung towards Obama harder than any other state in 2012.

People talk about Gerrymandering locking in those gains, but what if those lines were drawn around reliable White voters that aren't reliable all? What if the GOP genuinely IS a paper tiger?

Republicans are talking about trying to pivot to the Left and draw in Blacks and Hispanics. They're aware that they've maxed out their swayable Whites. They really need to watch out for the inroads that economic but not social liberalism can make into the pool of White voters that they foolishly think belong to them irretrievably. I think that pushing for entitlement reform could very well be the kiss of death for that voting base. You can make an argument that their 2010 wave depended entirely on selling people on the notion that Obamacare weakened Medicare. Indeed, there were protest signs that actually said "Keep Government Out of My Medicare!" What happens when Obamacare goes into effect next January and the world doesn't end? What happens if unemployment continues to slowly recover?

I think DCCC dropped the ball in 2012 by not going after and more vigorously defending House Districts crawling with these kind of voters. I think if Boehner and McConnell are the ones to overreach this term and the Dems become aware of that fumble then 2014 could be carnage, the bloodiest Midterm in history. The Return of the Blue Dogs with a vengeance.

I think that by 2024 the GOP could well and truly be "Whigged", with its Libertarian and Constitution wings breaking away and becoming the Right Wings of the new two parties: the Progressive Democrats and the Blue Dog Democrats. Demographically speaking, its really the only one of three things that can happen; the other two being the GOP absorbing, and being taken over by, the Blue Dogs while expelling the Libertarians into the Democrats, or the still less likely scenario of the Democrats expelling the Progressives to join with the Libertarians of the GOP, while gathering in the Constitution voters. One way or another, the present party system can't hold together.

But I'm crazy. Discuss.