I tend to agree with the emergent sense that Mitt Romney is the least bad Republican contender, though for a slightly different reason. A Republican president is capable of exerting the most damage on foreign policy, where he has broad autonomy. Their domestic policies, while likely bad, are largely paralyzed by Congress and public opinion, neither of which is amenable to the gutting of Medicare. So part of the question in evaluating which Republican you'd prefer is asking where they're likely to focus.
McCain and Giuliani both appear to have, as their most emotional policy conviction, an unrelenting hawkishness and confidence in US expansionism. Romney seems something of a finance-oriented technocrat, a conservative Robert Rubin. I may or may not approve of the resulting trade policy, but I don't get the sense that he's aching to bomb Iran. His focus appears less dangerous than that of the two. Events are uncertain, of course, and Bush's reaction to 9/11 teaches the folly of assuming what you do and don't know about an inexperienced president's core convictions. But so long as we're playing this particular parlor game, put my least-bad vote behind Romney.
