...IDP, who would you consider to be "so egregiously non-conservative that I could not bear to vote for them"
Not to challenge you but to help sort this out in my own mind
Newt Gingrich. He sat next to Nancy Pelosi and shilled for the Global Warming fraud.
Mitt Romney. RomneyCare.
Mike Huckabee. The guy shamelessly uses Christianity as a political prop, and he's essentially a pro-life liberal.
Those are the three zombies left over from past cycles that would really cause me to consider voting for a third party - especially if there was a strong third party emergence due to the poor quality of the GOP nominee.
I have mixed feelings about Tim Pawlenty. My main problem is that in spite of his basic decency and basic conservatism, I don't think he can win. It shouldn't be so, but charisma matters in presidential politics. I don't think he has what it takes to beat Obama. But if he's the nominee, I'll vote for him.
He's a pragmatic politician, and politically minded to the core, which is a strike against him in my opinion. That is what drove his support of John McCain, after all. He wanted to be next, and well, that just sucks.
But as far as his conservatism, he's getting a little bit of a bum rap I think. When he came into office, and he had a conservative legislature, he governed as conservatively as one could have wished for in this liberal state. When the GOP lost the legislature, he did what he could to stem the tide on taxes and spending and still remain viable. Throughout his second term, the GOP in the state legislature shrunk in numbers each cycle, and the pressure on him grew. He ended up compromising on some things, but they were never his initiatives, and there was immense pressure. At one point he even issued controversial executive orders to defund health care entitlements.
His one cardinal sin against conservatism for which blame cannot be shared with liberals was his embrace of Global Warming and support of cap-n-trade. But since the climategate scandal he has unequivocally called his support a mistake, and come out strongly against it. That might be rank political opportunism, but my suspicion based on how he governed was that his support for Global Warming and cap-n-trade was the political opportunism, and his recanting is where he is most comfortable. He is NOT and never has been a big-government Republican. He's a low-taxes, small government guy.
In spite of his weaknesses, if he's the nominee, he'll get my vote. He's a good man, and VERY difficult to demonize.