George W Bush, in his initial public offering back in 1999-2000 was, in fact, sold as an amalgamation of Huckabee and Romney. - Breeding, money, business on one hand, “aw-shucks Jesus loves me” compassion on the other. Of course, unlike Huckabee, Bush evidences no genuine empathy at all. His compassion was always sentimental and mawkish. Unlike Romney, his pedigree only produced petulent expectations of entitlement and his business acument proved more Ken Lay than Warren Buffett.

Bush ended up disappointing everyone who deluded themselves he was fit to be president in the first place. The brave, morally courageous, Messiah-in-Chief he was painted as being, eventually crumbled into several pieces, individual mythic turns that Bush himself never convincingly pulled off, but which are now stalking us in the rostra of GOP candidates.

Rush Limbaugh is probably right, a McCain or a Huckabee victory might simply tear the Republican party apart, Mitt Romney really is the last gasp attempt to unite the white shoe Establishment with the trailer park of the former-segregationist South.

The Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon, long touted as a master stroke of electoral politics, may yet be viewed as a disaster for the GOP of 2008.

In time, Johnson’s willingness to jettison the old guard racists of the solid south by advancing Civil Rights legislation may end up being seen, not as some suicidal altrusim (they had, after all, brought him to the dance in the first place) but a necessary dump of the nation’s most ignorant, bigoted, superstitious and corrupt political machines into the lap of the GOP.

By embracing the Democratic party’s cast-offs, the GOP swallowed a poison pill.

Main-line Republicans, who always liked to influence from the shadows lost control of the party years ago as they gave more and more room to accommodate the antediluvian cravings of it’s new “base”.

No doubt, I will receive more e-mails from friends wondering why I haven’t jumped on the Bloomberg Bandwagon (Now with nearly a staggering 1000 signatures!) . Sure, let’s reform the Republican Party by dodging the issue all together.

To see where a candidate stands on the issues, visit Issue 2008