In 2008, a Pew Research study found that 68% of Republicans said their field of presidential candidates was excellent or good. Four years later, that number has
fallen to 51%. It's not just Pew: a
new CBS survey finds even less enthusiasm: 58% say they want a new candidate.
But even though it's easy to see why Republicans are depressed about their presidential candidates, nobody should be surprised that it's coming to this. After all, the Republican Party has screwed up just about everything that it's touched over the last 10 years.
Republicans brought us a president who was elected by the Supreme Court despite losing the popular vote. They brought us a war in Afghanistan ... but didn't get bin Laden. They brought us a war in Iraq ... based on lies about WMD. They brought us the tax cuts for the wealthy that exploded our debt. They brought us the financial crisis that created the Bush Depression.
In 2008, they nominated the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, to be vice president of the United States ... and when they lost that election, they brought us the tea party. When they got back into office, they held middle-class tax cuts hostage, threatened to shut down the government, and brought us to the edge of default with the debt limit crisis.
And now their base is thoroughly unenthusiastic about 2012 because they can't find a single presidential candidate better than Mitt Romney. You can't blame them for being depressed, but given their record over the past dozen years, is anybody really surprised that Republicans are botching their nomination process?