This pretty much encapsulates the entire presidential race in 2008 in two tidy quotes.  First, an Iowan via Eugene Robinson:

I ran into Gary Levitz, a retired management consultant from Iowa City, at both the Edwards and Clinton events -- Iowans like to comparison-shop before they buy. "The Democrats have outstanding candidates, and it's difficult to tell them apart on the issues," he said. "You wish there was some way you could have them all."

Robinson goes on to talk about the success of the Edwards campaign once he turned up the heat -- turns out Americans in Iowa were ready for some righteous anger against the greedy crony's enriching themselves at the rest of our expense.  

Just take a peek at the various positions and statements of candidates in both parties on federal contracting rules or executive power, constitutional and rule of law issues.  For starters.  And see what I mean by a "deep bench" versus "mixed nuts" comparison.  Then take some time to read the various foreign policy candidate essays from Foreign Affairs, and get a real taste of those GOP mixed nuts.  (The Giuliani one is an especially "chock full o' nuts" extravaganza.)  And across a whole spectrum of issues.

For the GOP, I couldn't sum it up any better than disaffected and now former Republican, John Cole at Balloon Juice:

...Giuliani is tanking, Thompson is sleeping, and, most importantly, Huckabee is surging (and you can expect to see more attacks like this from the establishment), and something had to be done, and done quickly, or the corporate establishment might lose all control of the race. As such, NRO offers a glimmer of honesty:

More than the other primary candidates, Romney has President Bush’s virtues and avoids his flaws. His moral positions, and his instincts on taxes and foreign policy, are the same. But he is less inclined to federal activism, less tolerant of overspending, better able to defend conservative positions in debate, and more likely to demand performance from his subordinates. A winning combination, by our lights.

Everything but the bolded portion is simple nonsense. They think Romney can win, and that is all that matters. Because it sure as hell isn’t Romney’s record that is convincing them to support him. At any rate, it should be fun to watch the evangelical base get alienated by the party elites as the establishment candidate is rammed down their collective throats and the go for-the-throat right-wing media do what they can to strangle Huckabee’s campaign in the crib....

Grab the popcorn and soda, because the GOP is providing the nuts.

Nuts, indeed. Just take a peek at Stoller's review of the latest "full spectrum Republican" ad from Team Romney and try not to laugh at the "winning combination" selection.  After reading through the IHT reviews of the various GOP campaign styles, I'm not certain that "nuts" goes far enough....

(H/T to dakine)