Monday, January 21, 2008

McCains Carolinian Popularity Actually Waned But He Still Won

"It is, perhaps, a measure of the mess this year's primaries have become that we're willing to consider this much of a victory at all. Compared to the race in 2000, McCain actually did worse with the Republican base this time around than he did against George W. Bush. It's merely the fractured field that saw him through. (Fred Thompson surely has a claim on the vice presidential nod should McCain go all the way, given the votes he took from Mike Huckabee on the Arizona senator's behalf.)

Look at the numbers. In 2000, McCain won the votes of some 240,000 South Carolinians, or 42 percent of the GOP electorate to Bush's 53 percent. On Saturday, he won 135,000 votes and 33 percent of the GOP electorate. Turnout was down overall (as it's been all over, a bad sign for the GOP) by about 25 percent - but a 100,000-voter drop versus the last time he ran still points up just how weak he is with the GOP base."

A worst case scenario nightmare come true. Fred Thompson assuring a McCain victory. The media...including Conservative pundits Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham and Michelle Malkin...see any trend there?...told us from the beginning that Thompson entered the race far too late, and did nothing but sleepwalk through it when he did toss his hat into the ring. Since 90% of the electorate STILL gets its news from the Jurassic Press, even the relatively minuscule influence the internet has over voters was diluted when certain "Conservatives" dissed Fred from the get-go. I was appalled at the things Ingraham was saying about Thompson, and Limbaugh, not wishing to alienate fellow gallybags, was noticeably silent until the smoke began to clear.

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