I don't know how many folks here are familiar with Scragged.com, but I like it a lot. It has very good writers and covers the full spectrum of anti-left opinion from Palinesque social conservatism to small "l" libertarianism. I stumbled across it a few months ago when searching for information about 1913. I found a series of article called 1913: America's Worst Year.

1913: America's Worst Year - Introduction
1913: America's Worst Year - The Income Tax
1913: America's Worst Year - Election Reform
1913: America's Worst Year - The Federal Reserve
1913: America's Worst Year - What We Can Do

After that I was hooked.

Anyway today I read this
A recent political cartoon showed McCain's spaceship struggling to take off because George Bush is hanging onto the back. In our opinion, this is the largest single reason McCain lost.

In Washington, one can tell how disliked a politician is by how fast his friends disappear. The only thing more important than money to a politician is votes. Friends are far less important than either.

No matter how many millions McCain spent promising the center that his maverick-isms would work, his own words promoting George Bush's record (felicitously running in Obama ads) rang far more true.

Anyone interested in the facts can see that Ron Paul has more right to the term "maverick" than John McCain has. Dr. Paul voted against the GOP, against the Democrats, against everyone - year after year, never caring whether his caucus seat was warm.

Obama liked to say that he was "against the Iraq War before it was popular", but Ron Paul was too, and it was significantly harder to be against the Iraq War in 2003 as a Republican in Congress than as a Democratic state representative from extreme-leftist Hyde Park.

With respect to "being like Bush", consider the following:

* Obama and Bush both want amnesty for illegal aliens; Ron Paul does not.
* Obama and Bush both popularized the bailout plan. Ron Paul rejected it utterly.
* Obama and Bush both campaigned for the Medicare prescription drug bill. Ron Paul ferociously opposed it.
* Obama and Bush both supported No Child Left Behind and the expansion of the federal Department of Education. Ron Paul smelled a rat.
* Obama and Bush regularly dangle tax credits like carrots before the voters as if letting us keep our money is a reason to vote for them. Ron Paul says the IRS should be torn down entirely.

One could easily suggest that Mr. Obama is closer to George Bush and the Washington status quo than Ron Paul is. Imagine seeing TV ads playing that message over and over! Mr. Obama outspent McCain 4 to 1, mainly with TV ads. The content of those ads were apt - McCain was Bush 2.0. But what would Obama ads have said against Ron Paul? Ron Paul doesn't care about your children? He personally delivered them. Ron Paul doesn't care about the poor? No rebuttal needed; American society, and its history, offers plenty of natural evidence against such notions.

Those that only planned on voting against Bush would have been faced with parallels between Bush and Mr. Obama, not Bush and Paul.
snip...
Two months ago, I attended a seminar on "Effective Political Warfare" hosted by two longtime Republican activists and organizers. Some of the seminar revolved around their marketing techniques, but most of the time was spent excoriating the "sell out" RINOs in Washington. These party faithful, who have made a career of doing the dirty work required by political elections, spent several hours dressing down the Republican Party so thoroughly that random walk-ins would have thought it was a Streisand concert. These are the impassioned foot soldiers that the GOP has lost. Did they support Ron Paul? No, because he wasn't the nominee and they clearly understood the practical truth that third-party candidates don't win in the American system. But had he been the nominee, their enthusiasm would have been worlds different.


Read the rest here:Why Ron Paul Would Have Beaten Obama
It is excellent analysis and I recommend it to all.