Republican failure to win the presidency -- is it just bad candidates?

[Fuzzy Bear]

McCain was the strongest GOP candidate in 2008.  Every poll said so.  And he COULD have won, except (A) he picked Palin as his running mate (effectively sealing his fate) and (B) he embarrassed himself when he suspended his campaign to address the financial crisis, and then came off as having no solutions to the problem.  McCain MIGHT have won the election had he sided with the coalition of some House liberals and a group of conservatives led by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) in opposing the "too big to fail" bailouts; such a thing would have shaken up the dynamic of the election; folks could have voted for him as a vehicle of venting anger, and the anger at the big banks ran (and still runs) deep.  He didn't, though, and he ended up appearing more clueless on the financial meltdown than he was.

Romney's credentials would have, prior to 2008, made him a perfectly fine GOP candidate, but the nutty base of the GOP convinced Romney that he had to lie and contort himself to get the nomination.  Romney had a plan for Healthcare, he had implemented it, and it was along the lines of the plan National Republicans has been pushing for decades, but he was required to repudiate it in order to get the nomination.  Isn't that a bit odd; requiring your party's standard bearer for President to refute his signature accomplishment to be nominated.  So Romney barely spoke of his GOVERNMENT experience until it was too late.  This forced Romney to fudge his resume and state that he was a "businessman" who "knew how to create jobs".  This turned out to be a false narrative; Romney was a WEALTH creator, but not a JOB creator, and he was not only made to look foolish when this inconsistency was exposed, but it drew attention to the issue of Romney's Tax Returns, an issue Romney never recovered from. 

Even being a "leveraged buyout guy" was something Romney could have made work had he not made false claims of being a "job creator".  Romney's business record, by all accounts, was impeccable; he was the opposite of Bush 43, a legacy with a string of failures to his name.  As head of Bain Capital, Romney was a man who took over troubled companies and required them to live within their means.  Many went out of business, but many were not going to make it anyway.  People would have been receptive to THAT message if it had been accompanied by a truthful narrative of Romney's real background and a plan of action that would have shown how Romney would have applied his experience in this area to our national situation.  But the nutty base of the GOP will pounce on any candidate who will suggest any kind of reasonable solution that doesn't include further tax cuts and trashing the safety net in its entirety.