I can heartily recommend White's The Once and Future King. A great story, and narrated excellently.

This was perhaps a bit harsh, and I'm not as pessimistic as he is here in this article, but I can't help sympathizing with Bret Stephens a few weeks ago:

‎"Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn't because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it. If this election is as important as they all say it is, they had a duty to step up. Abraham Lincoln did not shy from the contest of 1860 because of Mary Todd. If Mr. Obama wins in November—or, rather, when he does—the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee."

Somebody get Mollie on the phone to the Romney campaign.  He needs to start name-dropping our first president on this issue (and other wealthy and well-liked presidents who would make the point well).  

Romney was good here, though.

One further thing I want to say: we Republicans need to stop taking this nonsense from Obama that he is not going to raise middle class taxes.  Just stop.  Given the spending trajectory he has us on, the math simply makes that impossible, unless he prefers a total debt crisis.  We need to be hollering from the mountaintops that Obama is going to raise middle class taxes, no matter what he says.  We can charge him with misleading the American people, which is only what he's doing.  Enough lying down about this already.  The Dems are terrified of voters' knowing that their spending requires middle class tax hikes, which explains the lack of Senate budgets, the sham Obama budget, and the fact that, analyzed correctly, his budgets would lead us to a debt crisis.  We cannot let them get away with this.

(continued) the continuing weakness of the economy, the offensive health care contraception mandate, the failure of the Russian "reset," Iran, etc.

And yet look at where we are.  We - conservatives, Republicans - are in agreement on most policy matters.  Even the social conservatives among us are mostly federalists, and hence roughly libertarian on a federal level.  We're all down with the Ryan budget.  But we are bitterly and seemingly unendingly divided about who our best candidate is.  Even the alleged "all stars" some of us still pine for do not seem "all stars" to all of us (I can see Limbaugh resisting Christie or Jeb fiercely).  And this division is making us look bad to everyone else, apparently.  We have a remarkably energetic House that has passed some terrific bills.  Despite that (though not without some hubris on the House's part; see the rejection of the Boehner plan last summer), it's been unjustifiably but successfully portrayed by the Democrats and the media as obstructionist.  All this while the Senate does nothing, failing to propose, much less pass, a budget in over 1000 days.  And we are losing this?  What a scandal.  Hard to stomach.

While Prof. Rahe is right that these polls have at times had biased internals, wmartin is correct that this one isn't inconsistent with others.  I think Robert Silvernail diagnoses the causes of our recent decline correctly.

I find myself very downhearted about this of late.  I am trying to have hope, but at this point I'm expecting the worst so as to minimize my disappointment.  I used to think my Democratic friends were cocky to predict Obama's reelection with such confidence, but now I see their point.

Look how bad things are.  We have a president who it is extraordinarily difficult to say deserves reelection.  Did anyone see his budget?  The putative $4 trillion in deficit reduction is going to be reduced by (1) the false $850 billion saved by the war drawdown, (2) a baseline that assumes that Congress won't enact "doc fixes" for Medicare, and possibly  (3) the administration's both assuming savings from the sequester and simultaneously undoing it, in what is nothing other than a logical contradiction.  Wait until we see a full analysis of this from CBO.  It won't be pretty.  I could continue on other topics - Obamacare's unpopularity

The idea that Mitch Daniels is a RINO is, to be blunt, preposterous.  RINO is a word that is thrown around far too freely, with few if any attempts to justify it (similar to the contention that Sarah Palin is electable).  It reminds me of communists branding fellow communists as insufficiently committed to the revolution in order to gain power, or of some Muslims calling others takfir (infidels).  Mitch Daniels has turned around Indiana's finances, passed a law to prevent the state from funding Planned Parenthood, and is about to preside over his state's passage of a right-to-work law.  If Mitch Daniels is a RINO then either "RINO" is a good thing, or the word is meaningless.

Gus, even if I buy that McCain surged after Palin was selected as the nominee for VP and that her selection caused that surge (which I'll do for the sake of this argument), that doesn't demonstrate that a turn against her - once the public got to know her better - didn't hurt him.  

I'm with you that we need a candidate who can win moderates over, not pander to them, since the latter will lead to deeply unconservative positions. All that said, I'm just not at all convinced that Palin is capable of doing this.  I actually think that Chris Christie (blue state governor), Mitch Daniels (swing state governor, reelected), and perhaps Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio (all elected officials from swing or blue states) could, more so than Palin.

cdor - It's not clear to me that "Life is not fair, therefore the young need to make up 100% of the shortfall of promises made to the old" is a valid inference.  I suppose I can see something like splitting it.  

Overall, I think the general approach of Paul Ryan and the Republicans is probably right: for those in or close to retirement, we can continue to pay out benefits as promised (though only if doing so won't harm the country more overall; I don't believe keeping the promise is a categorical imperative), but for those further away and thereby still able to plan, we're going to adjust, partly by means testing transfers of wealth that shouldn't be going to any but the poor and sick in the first place.

Gus,

Thanks for your reply.  You offer good reasons why Palin is a solid and credentialed conservative (though I'm skeptical about her resignation from office mid-term, and about her starting a reality show thereafter).  But, however unfortunately, that's not enough to win the presidency.  I wanted to see evidence that she can actually appeal to the moderates and independents whose votes are necessary to win.  For instance, what's her overall favorability rating?  How does she do with independents?  Is there evidence whether she helped or hurt John McCain in 2008?  How does she fare in polls against Obama?  Like it or not, if we want to win, this stuff matters.  Not everyone is as solidly conservative as we are.  For all I know there's data that supports Palin's appeal to swing voters.  But I've just never seen it.

hugely increased taxes simply to make up for promises made to voters in the 60's (when I wasn't yet alive) that, even considering only what's been paid in, may not be able to be kept due to irresponsible leaders?  The answer is no.  I understand the feeling of being cheated, but there are real people (as well as some who don't yet exist) who will have to suffer to keep this promise they never made.

1. Daniels on the substance was good, on style was, yes, a bit boring.  Part of me thinks, "Well isn't what we need a solid, non-threatening conservative who'd made a good president and who will make the election a referendum on Obama, and not a choice?"  And it's not as if Daniels hasn't demonstrated his electability in a less-than-red state - he won his reelection in Indiana by a landslide.  If that thinking is wrong, and he can't win because of his style, so much the worse for the country.

2. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask that those suggesting Palin actually explain how she could possibly get elected, how she is in fact the answer to all our GOP prayers, rather than just blandly asserting this.  No one ever does this and I think it's because it can't be done.

3. I want to push back on the "no means-testing" arguments above.  First, Medicare and Social Security will be giving out to today's recipients far more than they paid in.  Second, regardless of that, did I and my kids sign up to pay

Way to go, Mitch.  A mild-mannered midwesterner, no doubt.  But grown-up, honest, not lecturing, modest.  The only thing he needs to do is crack a self-deprecating joke here or there.  

This may all be moot, but I can't see why a credentialed, conservative, two-term swing-state governor who won his second term in a landslide wouldn't be a better candidate than an unliked, fire-breathing, historically unreliable and not consistently conservative man who was kicked out of Congress by his colleagues.  

...our party's inability to nominate a consistent, credentialed conservative who can simultaneously appeal to the independents and moderates who, at least the conventional wisdom goes, will be necessary to win this election (and if that conventional wisdom is wrong, can somebody, for once, explain why, rather than just presuming it?).  I think Christie, Ryan, Daniels, Jindal and perhaps some others were folks who could have fit that bill.  And I'm almost shocked that, at such a crucial time for everything that we conservatives hold dear, none of them answered the call to run.  

It's clear that we may have to make the best out of a bad situation.  But it's not out of bounds to recognize that what we have is just that - a bad situation.

First, can someone define what the GOP establishment is?  

Second, I am no Romney fan.  I've never been able to warm to him and I don't find him that inspiring.  And for all I know, Obama wouldn't have that hard a time against him.  What's more, I've been pretty disgusted by Rubin's incessant vitriol against everyone but Romney.  It's frequently seemed like she'd rather hit candidates than talk about issues.

All that said, can we stop demonizing people who have hesitation about Newt?  Are the criticisms that he hasn't always been a reliable conservative unfounded?  Are the worries about his personal stability unjustified?  Are polls showing his favorable/unfavorable at 27/56 (FoxNews) not to be trusted, or obviously capable of being overcome?  It's fine to make the case that Newt ought to be our nominee.  It's not fine to call everyone who thinks otherwise an unconservative, establishment hack who's a sop for Romney.  Has anyone ever really wanted Romney besides his campaign?

I don't know if blame is the right emotion here, but what I feel is deep disappointment and sadness at...

I recall an occasion when Michael Barone somewhat surreptitiously handed Paul Ryan a post of Prof. Rahe's exhorting Ryan to run.  I don't know, sounds suspicious.  Perhaps there is a cabal of "dark ladies."