PBS's Mark Shields on Friday advanced the typical liberal media line that there's a danger to the GOP if it nominates a presidential candidate that is too conservative.
When he finished, his "Inside Washington" co-panelist Charles Krauthammer marvelously responded, "What Mark wants is a Republican nominee who is a squish and then he’ll vote against him anyway" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
MARK SHIELDS, PBS: Historically, the Republican races always come down to candidates from the two factions within the party, the moderate candidate versus the conservative candidate, each group. Bill McInturff, the conservative pollster, the Republican pollster, has developed this theory, and it is absolutely valid. It was John McCain, it was McCain and Giuliani competed to be the moderate candidate in 2008, and Mike Huckabee and a whole host of others, and it was Huckabee and McCain who basically became the survivors. And this is a test of whether in fact there is a moderate wing and an independent wing still there. But Jon Huntsman I think is laying claim to that, and I think Mitch Daniels will also compete for that if he comes into the race.
But the real action and all the intensity and energy right now seems to be exclusively on the conservative side, and if that’s the case, it’s going to be a problem as it was for the Democrats in 1972 when all the energy and all the action was on the left side of its Party, and they nominated George McGovern, an admirable man who carried one state.
Exactly.
Every four years, Americans have to listen to liberal media members like Shields wax political about who should be the Republican nominee for president, and it's typically the candidate furthest to the left that such commentators still wouldn't vote for if their life depended on it.
It's kind of like Red Sox fans advising the Yankees what players they should pick up before the trading deadline. Whoever the General Manager is at the time is smart enough to smell a rat, and wisely goes in the exact opposite direction.
It's high time conservatives understand this and in this campaign cycle do the reverse of whatever people like Shields and his ilk suggest for they don't have conservatives' best interests at heart.
Never did, never will.
