***If, as I expect, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson is the 2008 GOP nominee, why would conservatives have to “hold their noses” to vote for them?

***Keeping Hillary! out of the White House next year will probably be impossible no matter who the Republican standard-bearer is.  After that it won’t be too long before the current intra-party spat starts looking pretty silly.

I remember “Read my lips”; I remember how outraged conservatives took a walk on Bush41 in 1992, and the ensuing two years of, shall we say, “unintended consequences.”  This is history being its cyclical self.

***If, as Peggy Noonan argues today, the Bushies and their in-party allies are contemptuous of the GOP base, couldn’t the former’s seemingly irrational attacks on the latter actually be a rather shrewd ploy to goad conservatives into bolting the party, which just happens to be the dream every RINO holds closest to his/her stony heart?  Thus would close the circle opened when Goldwater backers hooted and jeered Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 Republican convention, the common thread the indiscreet disapprobation of the Right, the key difference that this time, the RINOs would get the last laugh.

***The Constitution Party, like any third party, is like New Coke: looks good on paper, but isn’t going anywhere.  May as well nickname it the “political white flag” party, because any disgruntled conservative who flees there is, in any practical, realistic sense, giving up the fight.

The political winds are already “lefterly” and will remain that way for at least the next several years.  “Staying the course” in the GOP may be the difference between coming back in 2010 or 2012 and being completely out of it for a generation or more.

Others may choose the latter as they will.  I’ll still opt for the former - every time.