I forgot to mention the bullet proof vest.

Is it a coincidence that the most successful GOP candidates of the past decades were – Nixon, Reagan, Bush — were absolutely despised by the MSM?

So you’re saying here that the MSM was trying mightily to get Gore elected? You’ve gotta be kidding.

Just one example–for every reference (via a Nexis-Lexis lookup) during the ’00 campaign to Bush’s irregularities with his service in TANG, there were more than ten to Gore’s having claimed to have invented the internet.

No POTUS was more “despised” by the MSM than Clinton. They didn’t like Gore any better.

Right now, I’d put a fork in him, he’s done.

However, the moment McCain tried to run and needed to gain the support of his party…the media and liberals dumped his stock.

You don’t think he damaged his own stock by supporting torture, Falwell and Bush?

So, that means the GOP oughta run Newt. Which in turn would galvanize the left giving the Democrats the win! To be honest, I think they would be most successful with a candidate like Giuliani, who can reach out to different constituencies or Sen Thompson, who would have the backing of the solid south, and could use his TV image to lure independents. McCain is losing ground because once he came under increased scrutiny of a presidential campaign, he no longer attracted either conservatives, who doubted his conversions on their key positions, and independents, who saw him as going too far to the right to win the nomination.

McCain was — like Hagel — the GOPer the media loved, as he would criticize his own party and Bush. Look at how liberals and the media keep floating Hagel as a “Republican presidential contender” (to quote how the BBC continually describe him).

However, the moment McCain tried to run and needed to gain the support of his party…the media and liberals dumped his stock.

Is it a coincidence that the most successful GOP candidates of the past decades were – Nixon, Reagan, Bush — were absolutely despised by the MSM? Recall Pauline Kael’s famous puzzlement about Nixon’s election: “How did he get elected? Nobody I know voted for him.”

A successful Republican candidate will ride on the support of the party, not Jon Stewart, David Letterman and the Washington press corps.

Of the ’08 candidates, that would make Guiliani the man to beat.

Remember, regardless of his non-Republican aspects, as the MSM and the left blogosphere begin throwing everything at Guiliani, this will trigger the inevitable response in the GOP that it did with Reagan and later Bush.

Ironically, it will probably be liberal loathing that defines the GOP candidate for 08.

It seems that every Republican candidates is going to come out of the primaries as damaged good and will have about as much chance of winning the general eleciton as Bob Dole did in 1996.

Well, I do not completely agree with your prediction that whomever wins the Republican nomination will have no chance of winning the national elections for president, but that aside: you make a very good point.

I guess this is what happens when one party is totally dominate and the other is sliding into oblivion.