The Angry Right and McCain

No, I haven't been sitting this one out: Actually, I wrote a column on this yesterday, which can be read here on our Web site, and in NYT News Service papers such as the Austin American-Statesman. And trust me, I've been getting it with both barrels from readers and from hosts/listeners on the radio shows I've done in the past couple of weeks. An excerpt from the DN column:

"...On Friday, Ann Coulter made a Hillary Clinton Campaign Tour stop on Fox's 'Your World With Neil Cavuto,' saying that McCain 'has no honor' and adding that 'I would vote for the devil over John McCain; thus, my claim that I would vote for Hillary over John McCain.'

Coulter isn't the only conservative pundit acting as though GOP McCain supporters - of which there are more than they'd hoped, obviously - are no less than traitors.

Some view the mobilization against McCain as a winnable effort in the vein of the defeat of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, a White House counsel who had little backing other than her boss, Bush. Manipulating the White House, though, is one thing. Manipulating an entire electorate is a little more difficult.

On Saturday, Hugh Hewitt blogged at Townhall, 'When Rush declared on Thursday that a "vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain," the focus became very, very clear for conservative voters - who heard it. That message has been repeated a few times by others from Laura Ingraham to Mark Levin and most of us in between, as well as by folks like Rick Santorum and Denny Hastert. Messages take a while to get delivered, but they eventually get there.'

What's scary is that lifelong Republicans are, perhaps more than ever in recent memory, seeing very little tolerance for moderate or 'big tent' points of view in the scramble for the 2008 nomination. In doing a couple of radio shows around the debate, I could practically hear the pins going into the Bridget voodoo doll on the other end as the hosts lambasted me for not tarring and feathering McCain.

'Educate yourself with some Mark Levin on how much of a disaster this man is,' a reader commented on my pre-Florida column making the case for McCain. '...The man is damm (sic) lib you moron!'

I would hope that Pundit Worship hasn't reached such a ridiculous point that voters depend on their sage (or whack) advice to make such important decisions as voting. I would hope that voters stick to educating themselves on the issues and candidates' records, and save the quivering at the fire and brimstone for Sunday services.

Conservatives' hold over talk radio has been seen as a power stronghold, even sparking some Democrats' effort to reinstate the 'fairness doctrine,' which McCain has incidentally opposed. 'And the fact that leading talkers have never acknowledged the senator's integrity and leadership on this issue also reveals something significant about the character of his critics,' Michael Medved wrote last week..."

And wouldn't you know, some sage reader offered an excuse for Medved's "left turn" (aka not joining the McCain bashers): He's a Jew, therefore is supposedly a) secretly left wing, and b) in Israel's pocket.