Hey, I'm back.

I seem to have gotten more attention for my Hillary Clinton post than I expected (thanks, Avedon). Wesley Clark got mentioned a lot in the comments; if, as some of you suggest, he really is connecting with the public, I haven't noticed, but I admit I haven't paid much attention to him since last year's primaries. He's got to connect, though -- just being a former general isn't going to give him a free pass with flag-wavers (it certainly didn't when he was running in '04). If he's doing a better job now, that's great.

Meanwhile, it occurs to me is that I can't think of any credible Republican candidate who's doing anything to try to win over voters outisde the party base -- who, in other words, is doing what Hillary Clinton seems to be doing. The credible Republican candidates are all trying to be as hardcore as possible -- on the filibuster and Terri Schiavo and stem cells and so on. (I'm thinking of Frist and Santorum and Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney; I don't count McCain as a credible candidate because likely GOP primary voters despise him the way the Democratic base despises Lieberman.)

It's strange that '08 Republican hopefuls are behaving this way -- even Bush going into '04 wanted to be able to run on a prescription drug benefit and No Child Left Behind as well as the war and the tax cuts and Bible-thumping. What do the '08 hopefuls think? That it's not even necessary to appeal to a range of voters because the GOP attack machine is efficient enough to destroy whatever Democrat runs?