party no, i don t think this is fun for you. crazy never wins by joe scarborough in politico. by that standard, conservatism is in short supply in the 2012 gop field. and by following the conservative standard my father used, it s not so hard to pick out the pretenders in this year s field. guys like my dad do not gamble on candidates like michele bachmann or newt gingrich. guys like my dad tune out politicians who compare opponents to joseph stalin or adolf hitler. and guys like my dad don t cozy up to texas governor who is brag about seceding from the union or call social security unconstitutional. crazy didn t win, joe, but it also pulled down nominee, i believe. because the nominee wasn t willing to stand up to crazy. early on. and there was so early on. there were so many times, he could have just turned, mike barnicle, to michele bachmann, let s say, who said something outrageous and go, wait a second, i m a conservative, are
cuts. and not one raised his or her hand. that was the definition of crazy. right there. a vivid illustration. and you think about mitt romney constantly out, trying to get further to the right than anybody who challenged him. get to the right of rick perry on immigration. get to the right of rick santorum on contraception. these are not places where you win elections in the middle of the electorate. those are positions that are, if not crazy, then pretty far outside the mainstream. and by the way, those are things that guys like my dad right. who never voted for a democratic president in his life, would look at the tv set and go, are they kidding me? i m turning it over to see the atlanta braves. i want to end on this one, which made headlines. it was the cover story in the atlantic, why women can t have it all. remember this one? all my life, i d been on thesothe other side of the exchange.
you kidding me? or to herman cain, or you know, when sarah palin was riding around, calling barack obama a socialist, bordering on a communist. and all these other things that were going on. crazy never wins, but we learned another thing. you better stand up to crazy, if you want to win in bucks county, pennsylvania. if you want to win in the i-4 corridor. if you want to win in the sub b suburbs of columbus, ohio. if you want to win in the election, in the places where elections are also won. well, i can ask you, john heilemann as a keen observer of the electoral scene, was not the die cast for mitt romney and perhaps the rest of the year in terms of republican politics on the evening when all of the ten candidates on stage were asked to raise their hands if they were in favor of a dollar raise in revenue and $10 in budget