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Originally Posted by Pop Zeus
Am I mistaken or are all the Republican candidates campaigning against Hillary? Its like they decided to not try and win their primary, and instead just spend all of their time bringing down the presumptive winner in the other primary.
Also, they have virtually no sensible policy proposals. And everything they do declare is sad and/or crazy. Besides Ron Paul, who is awesome just because the GOP have their very own Kucinich now.
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It's a strategy focussed on electability. The candidates are trying to show that they can take on the candidate who looks like the inevitable nominee. It's a way to stir up those who don't want to see Hillary get elected. For Giuliani and McCain, it's their biggest selling point. Giuliani would be a compromise candidate in that he is not socially conservative. But he is viewed as being the strongest candidate to defeat Hillary. McCain is the one who actually polls closest to Hillary, so he wants to emphasize that. Romney is trying to show that 1) he can play with the big kids and 2) a recent convert to social conservatism is preferable to what Hillary would bring. And while the headline coming out of the last debate was that the candidates were gunning for Hillary, that was less than 1/3 of the 90 minute debate. They spent another 1/3 sniping at each other over their conservative credentials, 1/6 of the time talking about policies, and the remaining 1/6 shaking their heads at Ron Paul's slightly-less-crazy-than-Perot monologues.
The Republicans aren't spending much time talking specific policies, but that's really what you get from candidates that really seem serious about smaller government. They are talking tax and spending cuts (including taking on entitlement programs), alternative fuels and ending oil dependency, tough stands on foreign policy and immigration, and, to some extent, health care. Romney, in particular, has talked a bit about the health care plan he put together in Massachusetts and how that might work in other states. This group of Republican candidates is more old school. They don't see the federal government as the solution for too many of the challenges we face. The Democrats do. That's why they have no shortage of huge government programs to talk about. It marks a real difference between the parties this time.
