To me, a shockingly large and diverse group of B List Republicans — Huckabee, Brownback, Tancredo, and even in their ways Paul and Thompson — are more impressive than the official “big three.” They all seemed to me to come much closer than Giuliani, McCain, or Romney to be coming at things from a principled, coherent point of view.  The top contenders are all “Reagan! Terror! Bush! Terror! Reagan! Terreagan!” and weirdly busy running away from their actual records. ~Matt Yglesias