I don't think any of the current Republican candidates are actually in a place to win the presidency, regardless of what congress does. It feels like the last election, where everyone was saying that it was going to be close but the GOP didn't stand a chance from the start. Unless they can actually get a solid plan in place that isn't just lowering taxes and defunding Planned parenthood, they just won't get near enough votes.

Audibly crying?

The Race for House Speaker Has Republicans "Audibly Crying" | Mother Jones

No, it takes two. Nothing would force Obama to veto a multi-trillion dollar budget simply because it fails to finance one or two of his pet projects. Otherwise you are reading the Constitution to hold that the primary function of Congress is to approve the President's budget proposals. The media has created this notion.

Now if we had a Democrat-controlled Congress and a Republican President and he vetoed a budget that failed to provide funds for the NRA's Eddie Eagle and Project ChildSafe programmes - it would of course be the President's fault for the shutdown, not the Democrats in Congress. Fault only runs one way.

Why Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker Bid Was Doomed | FiveThirtyEight

Sharing this more for the "five ring circus" figure rather than the discussion of McCarthy. An interesting way to categorize the candidates.

Debt ceiling? That's nothing about financing Obama's "pet projects".

And, anyway, which "pet projects" are you referring to bearing in mind that the right wing crazies want to shut down the government over funding something that has been consistently funded for decades and thus can hardly fall under the "Obama's pet project" banner.

Back to the strawmen I see...

Bush is no moderate. He's only moderate in comparison to those who are even further to the right.

It's hard to say if any of those four are truly moderate, a matter of degrees perhaps.

As an aside, the McCarthy issue rumbles on, many people now saying he dropped out due to a rumored affair rather than a sudden wave of honesty over Benghazi. Party of family values indeed!

Kevin McCarthy's Exit Came After Personal Threat Over Affair Allegations

These days, a "moderate Republican" is one who doesn't use hyperbole and stomp his feet about minorities and immigrants.

It's hard to believe that there was once a time when there were liberals in the Republican party.

To be fair you could say the opposite about the Dems, lots of things have changed.

There are still some Blue Dog Democrats.

There are no longer any liberals in the GOP and virtually no moderates.

Another result of Tuesday's election: fewer 'Blue Dog' Democrats - LA Times

The U.S. Senate just got a lot more conservative. But its Democratic caucus just got a lot more liberal.

How’s that again?

The little-examined flip side to this week’s Republican victories is that they swept out many of the last remaining “blue dog” Democrats in the Senate – the centrists from conservative-leaning states who leavened a caucus dominated by urban liberals.

Among the Senate’s most moderate Democrats, two lost their seats on Tuesday: Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina. Two more appear likely to lose once the counting is over, Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Another, Max Baucus of Montana, retired.

As a result, the Senate – once Washington’s last refuge for centrist politicians – increasingly resembles the polarized, partisan House of Representatives. There are fewer and fewer moderates in either party; the vast majority of senators are either conservative Republicans or liberal Democrats.

The difference being that centrist Democrats lost to Republicans, whereas the centrist Republicans lost in the primaries to more right wing Republicans. I don't think we're seeing centrist Democrats lose in primaries to more left-wing Democrats.

Well, a first pet project would include closing Guantanamo and moving the detainees to Colorado. That closing and transfer would require funds that Congress could well not include in the budget. Clearly the President could take the view that as 2016 will be the last budget he controls, this pet project is so important to his legacy that he would veto a budget that didn't include those funds.

For the second, we're both thinking of PP. The fact that it has been funded for decades is, ipso facto, no reason that it must continue to be funded until the fall of the republic. Those same funds could be transferred to other women's health care providers who would undoubtedly jump in to fill the vacuum.

But PP is a sacred cow to his constituency and would, therefore, properly be considered a pet project. Obama has already threatened to shut down the government if he doesn't get his way on this issue.

Has he requested funds for this? If not, it's moot.

I haven't seen any attempt by the Republicans to ensure that others fill PP's shoes in the event PP is defunded.

There's been a consensus for decades that PP provides vital services and should be funded. What has changed is not that it is a "pet project of Obama's constituency", but that a small anti-abortion minority on the right of the Republican party want to defund it based on doctored videos. Never mind that the only federal funding for abortion is for those raped, victims of incest or those whose lives are in danger. Such women hardly constitute a "pet project"....

Off the top of my head De Blasio? Can not say I follow the primaries that much.

In Colorado there has been a move left in the Democrat areas, now that would be a paper in itself and I am not sure one I want to write. Certainly it seems much harder for centralists in either party to prevail.

My impression is that is due to many areas the primaries govern who gets in, certainly that was the case when I lived in Boulder County. So essentially the person who appealed most to the activists got in.