If not for macaca, there'd have been a trail of tobacco spit from Iowa to New Hampshire.

that Allen's past racial problems would have arisen.That would have turned off Independents. He may have won the senate seat if Webb hadn't run against him but I do not think he would have been the Republican nominee. Maybe as VP ( frightening) but not the presidential nominee.

Allen has crossover appeal to the three basic factions of the GOP base -- Christian fundamentalists, national security conservatives, and laissez faire corporatists. He would basically be in the same sweet spot as Fred Thompson, only he's a much more vigorous and charismatic campaigner than the senator from "Law and Order". He would have made Huckabee disappear before Iowa and driven Romney into early and expensive irrelevance. And Allen is young enough, energetic enough and sleazy enough to take on McCain one on one.

The independent issue would come up in the general election, but Allen without "macaca" would probably match up pretty well with Hillary Clinton in that regard.  He'd have been pretty solid in the south, mountain states and rural midwest.  I'd say he would actually have had a pretty good chance of getting an Electoral College majority even without winning the popular vote.

I agree 100%.

When I--and a lot of others--first supported Jim Webb it was with the hope of deleting Allen's war chest and making him work a bit to keep his senate seat. It all turned out much differently, thank God. But Allen definitely had the best shot at the GOP nomination and could have very well taken the whole enchillada.

Kind of does make you pause for a moment, doesn't it?

in a very nice, glowing sort of way.

and thousands of others should be proud of your efforts in 2006.  In particular, I want to thank the 1,000 people who signed our "Draft James Webb" petition in January 2006, and the people who pledged $42,000 to a potential Webb candidacy at a time when it all seemed like a hopeless dream.  Now, the only thing that's a hopeless dream is the one that has George Allen as the next President Ronald Reagan.  Ha.

While the "macaca moment" was, indeed, defining for Senator Allen and, in all likelihood, the major contributing factor in his defeat at the hands of Jim Webb, I'd posit that it was not just a gaffe. It exposed a major character fault - George Allen is a bully.

If George Allen had never uttered the word and been re-elected, I speculate that the crucible of a presidential primary battle would have revealed that weakness in his character, through some other set of circumstances, and ended his presidential ambitions.

The American people, like Virginians, admire a strong leader, but despise a bully. George Allen would have been seen as the latter, and rejected.

... that, in hindsight, George Allen should have still run for President this year.  

To the conservative base, "macaca" is either not a big deal or his silly explanations would have sufficed.  And he could argue that his 2006 loss was very narrow and it was caused by the liberal media being out to get him and turning nothing ("macaca") into a hatchet job (not that I agree with that last part).  I think after a full year to let the '06 loss fade away and of being disappointed with their slate of candidates, he would've had a real shot at emerging given what has unfolded with the fractured base.

Allen was out of funds in the last weeks of the Senate race.  Contributions were scarce.  Where was he going to get the cash??    

As late as 2007 Q4, he was broke.  

between him and the 2006 disaster.

Also, given the anti-GOP feeling in the country, he was right to sit this one out.

I think the WH is still in his sites, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him make a run for 2012, assuming a Democrat wins this year.

Thank you Jim Webb.

Thank you for running after we pestered you to death from late Dec-Feb 2006, thank you for taking out Miller, and thank you for winning the senate seat.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Besides his macacca moment.  Who can forget that in the weeks leading up the election, when Jim Webb was focusing on important issues such as health care costs and college tuition, Allen became obsessed with Webb's depiction of wartime attrocities in his novels that included sexually explicit scenes?  Instead of responding to Webb on the issues, Allen started reading from Webb's books at public events, trying to paint him as some sort of pornographer when he wrote about the tragic nature of The Human Condition in works of FICTION.  How out of touch could the man be?  What segments of the Republican party related to that absurdity?  I didn't have one Republican friend who could defended this behavior.  That was when it was obvious to me the man was totally nuts.  Anyone who would do something that ridiculous was surely likely to embarrass himself in some way.  Surely the scrutiny of a run for President would have caused him to show that he wasn't a "contenda"....At least I'd like to think the American people wouldn't have been that stupid.

The WaPo article mostly just adopts the Republican spin that if that one word hadn't somehow emerged from George Allen's mouth, he'd be cruising to the White House right now.  

C'mon, folks!  "Macaca" was a symptom of a much larger problem with George that first began to surface with Ryan Lizza's devastating article in The New Republic.  The problem was that Allen was a phony, a spoiled rich bully from the L.A. suburbs posing as a cowboy for fun and votes.

The "macaca" moment was so critical because it showed him letting down his guard -- on video.  But if that moment hadn't been his downfall, another would have.  It's like a Shakespearean tragedy -- character ultimately determines fate, it's just a matter of how long it takes...

How does Allen differ from Bush in that regard? And why didn't those qualities keep Shrub out of the White House?