Candidates for 2008

Some people have been touting Condoleezza Rice or Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008. Both would be great choices, but unfortunately the Republican Party is not going to nominate either. The Religious Right is not going to tolerate someone who won't jam down their ideas about abortion down people's throats (Giuliani) and too many of the Southerners who joined the party around the time that Strom Thurmond did will block an African-American woman (even if she stands for everything that I think is good about the Republican Party) from the nomination.

Too bad. I think either one would make a better candidate than the ones likely to be nominated. I'd once had a healthy respect for Bill Frist, a heart surgeon, not a lawyer, and definitely a person with some intelligence that even the Democrats (who have thought Eisenhower, Reagan, and the current president were dunces) could not denigrate -- but he lost all my respect in the Terri Schiavo episode. For him to go counter to everything that medical evidence dictates really showed that he'd become such a pure politician that he'd do something idiotic just to gain the votes of the right wing of the GOP. And McCain is trying to take up the left flank of the GOP, partnering with Teddy Kennedy on immigration reform as he did with Russ Feingold on campaign reform, even though his actual background is rather conservative. There aren't enough people on the left in the GOP to nominate him, as he should have realized from 2004. Only in states where non-Republicans could vote in GOP primaries did he do well. And this is a small part of the 50 states that will elect delegates to the convention.

Besides Frist and McCain, nobody else seems to even be considered as a GOP candidate for 2008. Perhaps it'll be someone nobody's talking about, the way Jimmy Carter did it on the Democratic side?