After the long spiel about Edwards below, I had another thought that might best be treated separately.

Most posters here clearly slant to the liberal side, or perhaps liberal/libertarian. (No offense meant to anyone on either side).

But in a hypothetical world where a Republican could win the next US election, and the choices were McCain or Romney only, which would you prefer and why?

Just curious because the differences between the Democratic candidates get discussed here a lot, but not so much the other side. Even if the arguement is a "least bad" one in your eyes, I'm curious to learn how you (y'all) see the two of them.

----------------------------

I'll answer that I think Romney would actually be the better of the two. Clearly he's flip-flopped some major issues and has been caught lying on minor issues. Those aren't to be taken lightly. However, I get the impression that the Massachusetts Romney is closer to the real Romney than is the guy on the stump trying to slide into the Republican nomination. And the Massachusetts Romney does have some concrete executive successes (and bipartisan successes) to cite.

McCain has also been effective as a by-partisan legislation guy. But some of his key legislative victories (McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy) haven't actually turned out very well.

But hey, I could be wrong . . .