she is just saying things now and not meaning them.

He's a right-winger all the way, but the media is prepared to extol his "centrism" pretty much 24/7 just as soon as he gets the nomination.

Despite the fact that he's an extremist owned by the radical Koch Bros.

It's possible for ANY and ALL political candidates to make hollow campaign promises.

My expectation is Bush picks up a radical as a running mate. For a while I thought that would certainly be Walker. But depending on where Bush claims residency (will he go for Maine?) that could include Rubio.

First Obama/Romney debate: Obama recited Mitt's teabag crazy primary positions back to him verbatim. Romney denied that he ever held those positions or said those things he said.

Media declared Romney the "winner" - no bother to fact check his statements, just rewarded for lying his ass off.

Happily in the long run he didn't pull it off. These guys seem even less stable than Mitt, hopefully they will fail at the game as well.

I expect the "debates" to be jam packed with them.

the rightwing lunatics in the GOP force their candidates to say some outrageous things, and the candidates themselves are pretty crazy to begin with. so what to do? how do all those billionaire republicans in the inner circle move their fanatical rightwing candidate to the center?

they buy it.

they buy campaign ads to tell the electorate that the freakish GOP positions are actually patriotic, true-blue American ideals, embraced strongly by the enlightened Christian founding fathers.

they buy state legislators and governors to enact amazing voter-qualification standards and underfund inner-city voter precincts.

by the time they're done and the checks are cashed, the voting public either agrees wholesale with the GOP candidate (some do) or believe that the candidates' most egregious expressed fascist beliefs are harmless common points of view in an ongoing controversy spanning centuries. those who disagree and believe the candidate's attitudes are inappropriate are marginalized and (if possible) blocked from voting or having their votes count if they do vote.

thus, embracing the center is not a problem for post-primary republicans. they change the nature of the electorate itself so the center comes to them.

this doesn't always work, sometimes they fail (cf McCain and Romney) but when they succeed...

NT

Those two come to mind immediately. Rubio might be able to carve that spot out as well. A few of the other clowns might, except that they will never get that far.