It’s going to interesting seeing how the right-wing noise machine spins Senator McCain’s victory (and Governor Huckabee’s second-place finish) in the South Carolina primary.
As I’ve noted before, there’s a vocal block of the GOP media that can’t stand McCain. That became even more apparent this past week:
- Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay: “McCain has done more to hurt the Republican party than any elected official I know of.”
- Rush Limbaugh (on McCain and Huckabee): “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.”
Today the GOP destroyers finished 1-2 in South Carolina. What gives?
Until now the McCain/Huckabee bashers had excuses to rationalize the two candidates’ victories. Huckabee won Iowa because it’s not a conservative Republican state. McCain won New Hampshire only because he had Democrats and independents crossing over to vote for him. In other words, neither won a contest of “real” Republican voters.
That case is now much harder to make. Although South Carolina does have an open primary, exit polling reveals that 80% of voters were Republican. More significantly, Huckabee (35%) and McCain (26%) finished first and second among self-identified conservative voters. The allegedly surging, conservative Fred Thompson failed to get 20%. So Huckabee and McCain have won the conservative vote in a conservative state.
So how will McCain’s victory be spun? I imagine, like this:
Tonight, he got 33% of the vote in a field where his top challengers–Romney and Giuliani–aren’t even running, and 135,000 actual votes. If just the same people who voted for McCain in 2000 had voted for him today, he would have won 50+% of the South Carolina vote. That would have been truly impressive.
Instead, John McCain LOST the support of 100,000 people–and he’s the winner?
The problem for McCain haters is that Romney appears to be the only viable “conservative” (and I use that term loosely) remaining. Are they going to be able to mobilize support for a default candidate? We’ll have a better answer after the Florida primary on January 29.