Ivory Dome

For weeks, if not months, Republican pundits in general, and conservative talk radio hosts in particular, have been excoriating John McCain and Mike Huckabee as The Enemy – Republicans In Name Only (RINO’s) who will destroy the Grand Old Party, desecrate the grave of Ronald Reagan, and leave us worse off than if a Democrat occupied the White House.  Mitt Romney, we were told, was the one True Conservative in the race.

In recent weeks, as Huckabee’s prospects began to wane following his loss (albeit close) to McCain in South Carolina, the venom was spared on the former governor of Arkansas and concentrated on the senior senator from Arizona.  Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin were continually reminding their listeners how many times McCain had stuck his finger in the collective eye of conservatives and how he voted not once but twice against the Bush tax cuts.

Then came Super Tuesday.  Despite these marching orders, McCain fared well, as did the once moribund Huckabee, and Romney didn’t do nearly as well as expected.  “It was Huckabee’s fault,” said the pundits.  “He took conservative votes away from the True Conservative.”  (“Wait a second, I thought Huckabee was a liberal?”  “Shut up, that was last month!”)  Not to worry, though; Romney pledged he would stay in the race.

Two days later the True Conservative and the Arch Liberal were to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  But Romney, always the consummate businessman, looked at the Return on Investment (ROI for you business types) of his latest capital venture (buying the White House) and, not having learned at Harvard Business School how to run a campaign on a shoestring like Huckabee, decided to cut his losses (technically “suspend” his losses).

Now it was up to the Arch Liberal to make nice with those same conservatives who had been villifying him for all these months.  Lo and behold, will wonders never cease – they started to buy it. According to a newsmax.com article by Ron Kessler entitled Conservatives Ready to Support McCain, Washington Insider Kessler intimated that he “talked with dozens of conservative leaders after McCain’s talk, and every one of them thought the Arizona senator sounded the right notes in his speech and said they felt inclined to support him.”  Miraculously, McCain, who just days before drove Ann Coulter into Hillary Clinton’s camp, was now acceptable to conservative elites.  The metamorphasis was complete:  Arch Liberal became Inevitable Nominee.

But the rank and file didn’t get the memo in time.  In the Kansas caucuses on Saturday, 60 percent of participating Republicans voted for Huckabee – the candidate that had allegedly taken conservative votes away from the True Conservative on Super Tuesday.  That same liberal (er, conservative, er liberal) also won the popular vote in the Louisiana primary.  And in Washington State, vote counting was suspended at only 87% with Huckabee trailing the Inevitable Nominee by only 2 percentage points.  Finally, on Sunday afternoon, the Associated Press declared McCain the winner.  One out of three – not very impressive for the Inevitable Nominee.

UPDATE:  As of Sunday evening, the remaining 13% of the vote in Washington State still hasn’t been counted, and the spread between McCain and Huckabee is only about 200 votes.  There’s quite a bit of pressure to count all the votes, although you’d never know it listening to the mainstream media.

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen-Eighty Four, Big Brother constantly attacked Eurasia as The Enemy of Oceania until one day, everyone woke up and the other superpower, Eastasia, suddenly held that distinction.  From that point on, all “two minute Hate” was directed not at Eurasia, but rather at Eastasia, as if the previous conflict had never existed.  It will be very interesting to see what conservative talk radio hosts will be saying on Monday.  When they resume their relentless attacks on Huckabee, will anyone remember that the Inevitable Nominee was the Arch Liberal just a few days before?  We’ll see on Tuesday in Virginia whether the New Truth has taken hold in time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 2:00 pm and is filed under 2008 Election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.