The early rumble out of Florida doesn’t look too promising for Mittmentum. But assuming McCain does pull this off tonight and establishes himself as the official GOP frontrunner (TM) there are some small saving graces.
First is the mini-GOP civil war as the right-wing establishment elites go after McCain with attack ads like this one being rolled out now by David Bossie’s Citizens United. Then there’s the spate of seizures from folks like Rush Limbaugh as they either go insane or try to eat their words and cozy up to McCain. Then we’ll have McCain trying to suck up to the Rush types. So it’s not all a loss.
One thing though, that has sort of congealed in my mind as I’ve watched the race moving over the last couple weeks. John McCain has picked up a number of endorsements recently from Republican officeholders. And I think that’s kind of the key. McCain doesn’t do badly at all with Republican officeholders, and that means, significantly, people who look forward to the prospect of running with him at the top of their ticket. Where McCain is extremely unpopular is among what you’d probably call professional conservatives — talk radio hounds, full-time activists, heads of the major organizations, conservative opinion journalists, etc. I really think that’s the division here.
