Reply #8: It's pretty simple to explain this [View All]

[longship]

Political parties are basically run by the state organizations. All those people in funny hats at the conventions are state operatives. They determine the agenda and who gets support to run for office.

The deal here is that since 1980 the Repug state organizations have been increasingly taken over by the lunatic rapture right. I don't think you'd find many state Repug organizations which are not basically a totally fundementalist Christian organization. This is true in Blue states as well as Red.

McCain knows that to get party support for a 2008 presidential bid, he's going to have to pander to these lunatics. So that's precisely what he is doing. He does it because he has no other choice if he wants to run as a Republican.

True Republicans (in the Eisenhower vein) are basically gone in the local parties. I think that a safe bet would be that some Republican moderate runs as an independant in 2008.