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You realize that McCain is their best politician (in terms of electability), but from the RW perspective he's shown an independence from the party line that has burned bridges with the RW faithful who drive the primary process (he's the Reptilican Party's Joe Lieberman -- a centrist who looks good on paper and who polls well among independents and the moderates of the opposing party and even some moderates within his own party but who is not adored by the activists who work for, contribute financially to, and loyally vote in the early primaries).
Also, I don't think the RW is monolithic enough to have the sort of "we'll back our most electable candidate" savvy. Instead, I think the driving force behind the BushInc Whore House is the Neo-Cons (those Crypto-Socialists who supposedly fear the integration of state with industry when state nationalizes industry but they yearn for the integration of state with industry when the state becomes a wholly owned puppet of industry). But the Reptilican party also includes a plurality of church-going, UN-hating, xenophobic, homophobic, judgmental, militaristic, ethnocentric psycho-social conservatives. Bush pays verbal homage to these folks, and he tosses them token bones, but he never delivers the real goods for them -- or at least as they expect him to -- because the Neo-Cons are his true masters.
John McCain has NOT carried water for the Neo-Cons with any consistency. That spoils his candidacy the way it would spoil a Democratic candidate who was generally well liked in name-recognition and favorability-rating polls, but who was distrusted and disliked by Labor, NOW, and the Sierra Club. John McCain will not be on the Crypto-Socialists' short list of dream candidates.
Likewise, John McCain has not been a loyal supporter of the psycho-social conservatives. He's advocated against prosecuting women who get abortions, he said that he'd call a "family conference" if his daughter wanted an abortion (this is not a debatable issue among the social conservatives), he favor abortion rights in cases of rape (without requiring any proof of the alleged rape), he's said he would not repeal Roe v. Wade, he favors a "mother's health" exception to the misnamed "partial-birth abortions," and he favors expanded embryonic stem cell research. You hear this and say, "those views are a hell of a lot more enlightened that BushInc's," but the psycho-social conservatives hear that and say "he's Satan!" So John McCain will not be on the psycho-social conservatives' short list of dream candidates.
So McCain is not the favored son of either Reptilican base voter group. If you think there are enough moderates who work in, vote in, and contribute to Reptilican primary campaigns to overcome this handicap, you have a more favorable view of the primary process than I do.
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