General election polls being published by pollsters are extremely deceiving and GOP voters in this cycle seemed to be the people being deceived. Theses hypothetical polls, which match up potential party nominees, continually show that McCain is the only GOP candidate that would do well against Hillary in November. The problem with these polls is that they are percentage polls and they do not go by the Electoral College system of giving states varying weights. McCain is picking up percentage points in states he doesn’t have a chance of winning in the general election.

For instance McCain has picked up a majority of his delegates in states such as California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut and New Hampshire; all states that are Democratic strongholds, all states Kerry won last cycle. Bottom line: McCain is stacking up delegates in states where he is likely to get crushed by either Clinton or Obama in November.

On the other hand McCain has lost Republican stronghold states to Huckabee in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, West Virginia…etc.

Now I don’t believe that Huckabee will be the Republican Nominee, but I don’t think McCain’s problem is solved by throwing Huckabee on the ticket.

The GOP is committing suicide in this election. They are choosing to have a decent showing in the general election rather than hold on to the party’s base. And this may prove to be a decision from which it is extremely difficult to recover.

I realize that the election is nine months away and many things could happen that would change the political landscape before the November election. Further economic collapses, expansion of the war in the Middle East into Iran or a terrorist attack in the Western world are all very real possibilities. A terrorist attack on Western soil being the only scenario of the three that would benefit McCain and it is unclear how much. However the deepening of the United States economic recession would get the American people asking questions which McCain would not be equipped to answer. Ron Paul may very well be the greatest beneficiary of the continuing down the road of recession for the United States, along with the devaluation of the dollar, simply because he has been predicting it for years and is well versed on reciting his proposed cure. Whether Ron Paul would still be participating in the Republican Nomination process or declared an independent run at the time when his message becomes impossible to ignore is unclear and to some extent irrelevant.

What is important to understand is that up until this point in this election cycle the discussion has been predominately about the horse race amongst the candidates, eventually the election will become about issues. When this shift takes place it is difficult to see the GOP being satisfied with a former Governor who just recently learned what a National Intelligence Estimate is or a Senator who was just getting around to reading up on economic policy by reading Greenspan’s book on the campaign trail. Then again we are talking about a country that reelected Bush just over three years ago.