There’s a conventional view that John McCain faces an impossible political balancing act.

He badly needs his party’s conservative base to stand with him in November, but that base doesn’t particularly like or trust him. However, if he reins in his more moderate instincts and caters to these activists with the purity and intensity they demand, he’ll do irreparable harm to his standing with independent voters. And, especially with the number of Republican-identifying voters dwindling, victory this fall is unthinkable without substantial independent support.

But is McCain’s predicament problem with his base actually as dire as all that? The most recent data from Gallup, whose daily tracking poll has shown McCain within a few points of Barack Obama for weeks now, has him winning conservative Republicans – that is to say, the Republican base – by a 90-6 percent margin.  read more »

John McCain has a new problem with some of his far-right critics. Having made his life miserable in the primary, they seem now intent on wrecking his general election effort before it even starts.

At a campaign event last week, radio talk-show host Bill Cunningham used Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, multiple times in his warm up act for McCain. The very next day the Tennessee Republican Party was back with the same stunt, sending out an official press release using Obama’s middle name.  read more »

Following John McCain’s victory in Florida last week the chorus of McCain-hatred grew louder on talk radio shows and on many conservative blogs.

Rush Limbaugh declared that McCain was not conservative and unacceptable as a candidate. Formerly respectable conservative figures took delight in criticizing McCain’s war record—yes, his war record—by tallying up the number of planes he had lost in combat. Ann Coulter and James Dobson, a social conservative leader and head of the Focus on the Family organization, declared McCain so indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton, the featured villainess in any conservative drama, that they would vote for her or stay home.

In short the McCain villifiers doubled down on their bet that they could derail McCain and lift their favored alternative, Mitt Romney, to victory.  read more »

What scares Ann Coulter? Hint: It ain't the Democrats.  read more »

Ann Coulter's new book, If Democrats Had Any Brains They'd Be Republicans, hits bookshelves today, and as is his wont, George Gurley sat down with the self-proclaimed right-wing polemicist for a long chat [UPDATED: read the complete interview here].

George gave us a few bits of wit and wisdom from his interview, while the television is going wild about the beminiskirted babe.  read more »