Do you think they can win without the super-devoted religious nutjob base? It's really interesting to me that Palin was such a double-edged sword for McCain. On the one hand, she fired up his base - Sean's discussion of the ground game on 538 constantly makes mention of the fact that McCain had zero volunteer support until Palin came along. However, the polls all showed that McCain kept bleeding other supporters (presumably more moderate Republicans. My mom, a moderate who perhaps leans slightly to the right, completely bailed on McCain after the Palin pick. She HATES Palin) as they learned what a joke Palin is.
The problem is, how do you get moderate Republicans, quasi-Libertarians, and Evangelical Christians to all support the same guy? McCain picks a moderate veep, say Lieberman, and he loses the Evangelicals. Pick Sarah Palin and you lose the moderates and the quasi-Libertarians.
I'm not sure that Romney is the answer. On paper he sounds good - socially conservative, but with some business know-how and some appeal to moderates. But looking at the primaries, his support was always lukewarm at best. I guess you can't halfway appeal to each of the core Republican groups, you've got to get some of them excited about you, enough so to drag all the others along.
I'm super interested to see what the Repubs do next.
