The American Mind

There are two things that need to be unpacked out of this Hugh Hewitt paragraph:

If Ann Coulter’s declares again that she’d campaign for Hillary at CPAC, she will be booed and rightly so. Not only did her grandstanding on Hannity & Colmes divert attention from the real issue before conservatives –the need to abandon the idea of voting for Huckabee or Paul and rally to Romney– she further fractures an already deeply divided GOP.

First, Coulter booed at CPAC for not backing McCain? Don’t be so sure. There’s a lot of dislike for the Arizona Senator among conservatives. The McCain campaign better realize that and do something about it instead of letting their candidate look like a petty front runner at a debate.

Second, Huckabee and Paul supporters abandoning their candidate? Not likely, or at least not until the candidates call it quits. Huckabee rallied evangelical Christians around him who think the rest of the Republican Party takes them for granted. I suspect many of them don’t think Huckabee will win the nomination, but they want to “make a statement” to the rest of the party. Paul’s supporters mostly came from outside the Republican Party. That’s a testament to his message. But they’re followers of Paul’s anti-war libertarianism and could care less about the rest of the GOP. They don’t feel like they’d have much of a place in the rest of the Republican Party. Neither McCain nor Romney have reached out to them. (The only candidate that had a shot was my ex-boss Fred Thompson and his federalism.) In November they’ll either vote for the anti-war Democrat or not vote.

“Romney v. McCain v. Coulter v. Obama”