Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s time has run out, as blogger/columnist Paul Burka notes here.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/perry-cpac-candidate-i-am-no-more

But I’m wondering about his assertion at the CPAC meeting that the Republican Party didn’t nominate two “true conservative” candidates in 2008 and 2012. Had John McCain (2008) and Mitt Romney (2012) been “true conservatives,” one of them would have been elected president, Perry suggested.

Didn’t Romney describe himself as a “severely conservative” governor of Massachusetts? And didn’t McCain insist repeatedly four years earlier that he’s always been staunchly pro-life on the issue of abortion and has been consistently conservative on other social issues?

I don’t think their nominees’ conservative credentials were the problem. The quality of their respective campaigns hurt them both badly.

When the financial crisis slammed into the nation’s economic infrastructure in 2008, McCain’s response was to suspend his campaign at a critical moment, return to Washington in search of answers, only to deliver nothing in the way of a solution.

And Romney’s campaign? Oh my. Let me count the stumbles: the ghastly debate performances with his GOP foes, such as when he offered to bet Perry $10,000 on something; his “self-deportation” answer to solving the illegal immigration problem; the infamous 47-percent remarks at a fundraiser in Florida. I’ll stop there.

What the Texas governor and other conservatives are saying at their conference essentially is that they hate compromise. They don’t want to work with moderates within their own party, let alone with those who represent the other party.

They want public policy crafted on their terms, ignoring the nation’s immense racial, moral, social and economic diversity.

I would suggest that John McCain and Mitt Romney, both of who are fine men, were conservative enough. They just didn’t know how to campaign for the presidency of a changing nation.