With the help of a few friends on Twitter, I’ve been making a list of people I turn to for infallibly insightful political analysis, and, so far, it goes a little something like this: Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Michael Moore and Kelly Clarkson. Add to that … Meghan McCain. Here she is again, on the possibility of an actual Rick Santorum nomination.

“It will be bedlam and hysteria like you’ve never seen,” she says. Bedlam and hysteria? Really? It would rock the Republican Party that much to nominate someone other than the pre-ordained candidate?

To be fair, McCain’s comments on the path to the nomination for Romney make sense to me. He didn’t shine as brilliantly in Iowa as he might have had he decided to make the state a priority sooner than December, but he did what he needed to do last night — and it will likely be a smooth path to the nomination for him from this point. (Then again, in politics, you never know!) She’s also right that the Iowa caucuses aren’t determinative (as she put it, “they’re irrelevant”).

But when she references her father’s path to the nomination, she instantly loses points. What she seems never to have realized — and what, I think, makes her so aggravating to conservatives — is that plenty of Republicans look at 2008 and regret their nomination of John McCain. In large part, the stiff opposition to Romney stems as much from the fear of repeating the mistake the GOP made in 2008 — the mistake of nominating “the next in line” even when that “next in line” espouses troublesome views and hasn’t proved himself a particularly adept campaigner. For what it’s worth, Romney was to the right of John McCain in 2008 and he remains to the right of John McCain in 2012. In between 2008 and 2012, Congress passed and the president signed Obamacare. That makes Romney’s support of Romneycare even more problematic now than it was in 2008 — but, at the same time, it makes Obama’s support for Obamacare more problematic than it was in 2008. Romney will at least be able to capitalize on the primacy of economic issues in this election. Long story short: Romney would surely do better in a race against Obama than McCain did — but support for him from former McCain supporters doesn’t help to make that case.

On that note, John McCain himself has now endorsed Romney. Delightful.