Agree about a right wing candidate. I suspect the Bloomberg numbers would change and he'd end up pulling in more of the mushing middle indys, dems and republicans.

I figure he'd play it as the guy with ties to a party so not having any strings tied to him. He could play at being mr. pragmatic this-is-just-how-it-really-is-let-me-tel l-you-folks and get Perot like numbers but from the middle.

I've been hoping that Tancredo will run as third-party candidate.

There is still the possibility that Michael Savage may run and that Judge Roy Moore of Alabama may run on the Constitution Party ticket. Those would pull votes in the Deep South as well and it could put Alabama, Mississippi, and some others into play. If we had a race with more than one credible third party candidate the GOP could be doomed.

It's called "Connecticut for Lieberman"

If we had a Democratic landslide in 2008 and 8 years of a Clinton, Obama, or Edwards administration the GOP would lose a lot of their base. Unity could emerage, a theocratic far right wing party could emerge, lots of things could be possible.

The situation between 1876 and 1892 shows a long-standing close split.  Once the southern states were "redeemed" and blacks disenfranchised, you had a situation where, more or less, the south was overwhelmingly Democratic, while the north showed a distinct, but smaller Republican advantage.  Only a few states were in play - primarily New York, Indiana, and Connecticut (Cleveland managed to win some other midwestern states  in 1892, in addition).  In these years, the Democrats generally had a slight overall edge in the popular vote (an unfair one, since it relied on the disenfranchisement of blacks), but because their support was concentrated in the south, they tended to have difficulty winning elections.  (The only race in these years in which the GOP won the popular vote was in 1880, which was probably the closest election in terms of the popular vote prior to 2000.) This only ended in 1896, when the Democrats embraced populism, which gained them competitiveness in the west, but lost them the northeast and insured large Republican electoral college until the GOP split over Progressivism in 1912 (and really, more broadly, until FDR was able to forge a majority Democratic coalition in 1932 - 1912 was a fluke, and the Democrats won in 1916 (as you point out, a very close election) largely thanks to the advantage of incumbency.

It's worth noting, though, that the long-standing even divide of 1876-1896 was largely due to the fact that the two parties were broad coalitions for identity politics, and that neither had any clear ideology.

All this being said, I'll just say that all these predictions of the death of the GOP are just as ridiculous as the belief Republicans were expressing a few years ago that they were going to have a permanent majority.  The Republicans may not be looking good now, but they'll be back.  They came back from coming in a distant third in 1912.  It's hard to see Mike Bloomberg succeeding where Teddy Roosevelt failed.  The Federalists were destroyed because they were seen as traitors  during the War of 1812, and because Madison and  Monroe co-opted all  their policies.  The Whigs were destroyed because of the slavery issue, a continuing cancer on American politics before the Civil War, which made a party which was essentially a coalition between northern anti-slavery protestants and southern plantation owners impossible to maintain.  (That the most important national Whig leader of the early 1850s (Seward) became the first Republican secretary of state to a man (Lincoln) whose first political idol was  Henry Clay,  suggests, in any event, that the demise of whiggery was greatly exaggerated - by the end of the 1870s or so, it's hard to see the GOP as anything but the old northern Whig party under a new name.

The Republicans may lose an election or two, but they'll be back.  And that's ultimately a good thing - one party rule is eventually corrosive, as the current Republican troubles suggest.

and support the growth of alternative parties, like the Greens and the the Libertarians, depending on the district.  By regionalizing other parties and leaving the Democrats as the only true national party, our majority is secured.

Imagine this: a country in which the two competitive parties in the Northeast are the Democrats and Working Families; in the South and Midwest, the Democrats and Republicans; in the Mountain states, the Democrats and Libertarians; and on the West Coast, the Democrats and the Greens.  Keep the Republicans in their regional Southern prison, as the Democrats were for so much of their history, and they won't have a serious chance at securing a majority.

on the other hand, I bet it would depend entirely on who each party nominates.  If we nominate Barack Obama, I can't imagine we'd lose too many voters to Unity 08, and likewise if Republicans nominate Giuliani or to a lesser extent, McCain, I doubt they'd lose too many, either (since they're already seen as "moderates," though again McCain is losing that image quickly).  If we were to nominate Hillary, and they were to nominate a Tancredo, or Gingrich or someone like that, Unity 08 could definitely pull a lot more from both sides, as the D and R nominees would be seen as more "partisan", and the mushy middle could be attracted to a "moderate" or "bipartisan" ticket.

Bloomberg is a good day to day manager of NYC and has for the most part governed slightly left of center.  I have never voted for him but I am not displeased with his performance.  However, he has weak political skills and an incredible tin ear.  He is still defending Con Ed on their handling of the disastrous blackout last year in Western Queens that lasted 8 days.  

He has been blessed in Mayoral runs with 2 incredibly weak and flawed candidates in Mark Green and Freddy Ferrer which speaks to the weakness of the NYC Dem party on the municipal level.  I have no doubt that candidates like Clinton, Obama or Edwards would not just crush him in NYC but nationally.  This guy is not a serious Presidential candidate.

Perhaps not if Edwards is.  With Edwards' platform, and IIRC Nader has endorsed him before, he'd probably stay out.