As will I, as will most of even the hardest hardcore Hot Air readership. Good for her for admitting it. Even so, Carlson’s point is well taken. Where was the big talk radio endorsement push on Romney’s behalf two weeks ago before South Carolina, when it might have helped? Answer: Nowhere, because too many of them were still jerking around with Fred at the time. Hugh Hewitt excepted, there’s never been any great passion for Romney among the punditocracy; even Coulter, who now pronounces him manifestly the best candidate, needed three primaries to pass before she was willing to make those feelings known. Mitt in his current incarnation hasn’t been and isn’t now much more than an “anybody but” candidate, and those candidacies seldom work. If they did, a state that twice elected a Republican governor wouldn’t have made Hillary Clinton a senator by landslide margins.
In the same vein, here’s Bill Kristol on McCain derangement syndrome, a charge that’s snide and reductive when applied to critiques of Maverick’s policies but right on point vis-a-vis some of the smears of his VC days that are circulating. One of Kristol’s own editors at the Standard, Matthew Continetti, offers a fuller diagnosis: McCain equals Bush minus the outward scorn for conservatism — or, if you prefer, Bush plus occasional “straight talk” about what he really thinks of the base. Hard to believe we can’t do better but I’m starting to wonder.
Get comfortable. The first polls don’t close for another nine hours.
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