Their starting to sound unhinged out there

Michael Reagan is joining the ranks of the "win at any cost" Republicans:

One of the criticisms about former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney focuses on his record concerning the abortion issue. We are told by the modern day Diogenes clones that he can’t be trusted to fight abortion because he once, more or less, supported a woman’s right to butcher her baby.

It may come as a surprise to these purists, but Ronald Reagan once supported abortion too. Yet nobody ever questioned his strong pro-life credentials after his conversion to Republicanism. They accepted his sincerity. Why can’t they accept Mitt Romney’s?

Because your father's conversion didn't come on the eve of his run for the presidency. Mitt Romney may be completely sincere, but we have no evidence of that fact other than his word. He held the positions that he needed to hold to please the Massachusetts left-wing electorate when he was running for governor and now that he is seeking the Republican nomination he suddenly, and very conviniently, has a revelation which amounts to a complete reversal of his previously held position. It is as though Saul of Tarsus had his Damascus Road experience only after finding out the the Emperor of Rome would pay a million denari to anyone converting to Christianity.

And please don't tell me about some statement he made way back when claiming to be "personally opposed to abortion". Bill and Hillary Clinton have said similar things. What matters is what you are doing to end legal abortion not what you say about it.

The same is true of Rudy Giuliani. On every major issue, he is a solidly conservative and extraordinarily adept executive, but because he backs abortion and some form of gun control, America’s mayor -- the hero of 9/11 and the man who did the impossible by cleaning up New York -- is all but ruled out as a 2008 candidate.

So you don't consider gun control or abortion, or presumably gay marriage and amnesty/open borders, "major issues"?

If we do what Rudy wants to do regarding the problem of the 20+ million illegal aliens and the millions more who want to enter the nation we will lose the nation. Not because your ATM machine will ask you to press 1 for English, but because so many of the new minority citizens will vote for the political party which will pay the best price for their votes and that will always be the Democrats.

Democrats will have a lock on the White House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and a veto proof majority in the House. What do you think the nation will look like after 50 years of that kind of governance?

Social issues go to the heart and soul of the nation. If we beat off the Islamofascists but lose our soul the nation will not have been worth defending. If we go down the path Europe is going down we will deserve the same destruction that Europe is heading for.

This is madness, and if it does not stop, the GOP is going to lose the presidential election in 2008. In the search for the perfect candidate we are going to end up with an imperfect candidate. . .

Stop and think for a moment about how completely inane that statement is. If we don't stop looking for an acceptable candidate we will wind up with an unacceptable candidate. Duh.

Ronald Reagan had one litmus test he applied to candidates. Were they Republicans? If they were he backed them all the way. He would let the party choose the candidate and he would support and vote for the candidate. He didn’t go sniffing around trying to find some flaw in their character or their past. Once nominated, they were his choice.

So by this logic no one should vote in the primaries. We should just wait until the candidate is chosen and then blindly support them. But if nobody participates in the process of choosing who the nominee is going to be how will he be chosen? I guess we let the media put forward someone as the "front runner" and then rubber stamp them.

As Michael Reagan points out his father was not perfect. Ronald Reagan made his share of mistakes and one of them was his famous "11th Commandment" of not criticising other Republicans. To get a sense of just how asinine that idea is try this thought experiment. Imagine that Hillary Clinton changes her party and registers as a Republican, without changing her position on any issue. Do we support her just because she is a Republican? What if she seeks and gains the Republican nomination for president and her Democrat opponent is Zell Miller? Do we step into the voting booth and pull the lever next to the picture of the elephant without any regard for what we are actually voting for?

The Democrats don’t have litmus tests. If the nominee is a Democrat, they support their candidate all the way, and if they lose it isn’t because they didn’t fight like demons for their man or woman.

Tell that to Joe Lieberman.

Michael we are nearly two years away from the presidential election. It is true that we just might have to hold our noses and vote for a liberal RINO as the lesser evil, but why should we lock ourselves into that unpleasant alternative now when we still have so much time to find someone we can support without having to drink a fifth of Wild Turkey before we step into the voting booth?