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Ezra asked readers to name "the least bad Republican" and Tapped readers seem to agree: the real least bad Republican is clearly he who shall not be named, Ron Paul, not Mitt Romney. Though, in fairness, as one commenter noted:
The Internet loves Ron Paul and hates all those other guys. So that's the comments you're going to get, like it or not. What's more, this post has been cataloged by the Google News spider, so everyone subscribed to news stories containing "Ron Paul" is directed to your post.Still, I'd tend to agree with those commenters that Ron Paul is, given his recent fundraising success, at least as viable as Mike Huckabee, who consistantly polls well in groups of a couple thousand hard-core social conservatives but has shown little ability to raise funds or build an in-house field operation.As for whether I was misunderstanding M.J. Rosenberg's assertion that Romney is preferable because "he does not believe the right-wing garbage he puts out with such abandon," I think M.J.'s statement speaks for itself. Ezra may prefer Romney on different grounds, though some of the commenters on my item from yesterday clearly beg to differ with his assessment of Romney's competence, and it is also not just arguable but argued how successful such "competence" candidates have been as presidents in the past.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
