New Arizona polls numbers from Rasmussen show that Hillary leads Obama, 46 percent to 41 percent, while McCain leads Romney, 43 percent to 34 percent.
Meanwhile, over at Salon: Jim Nintzel introduces us to the Arizona conservatives who hate John McCain. An excerpt:
When Republican Rob Haney goes door to door to stump for candidates, he asks them to rate John McCain on a scale from 1 to 10. “The people who don’t know much about politics rate him a 9 or 10,” says Haney, who is a state party chairman in Arizona’s 11th Legislative District. “The people who know what’s going on rate him a 1 or a 2, or ask, ‘Can I rate him a minus?'”
Haney, a 66-year-old retired IBM engineer, has been a persistent thorn in McCain’s side in recent years. One of his main missions is to reveal what he sees as the truth about McCain: “We in the conservative Republican base do not feel he is a Republican. He is a liberal-moderate.”
Haney isn’t alone in his contempt for McCain. In a January straw poll of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, Mitt Romney won the support of 26 percent of the 721 activists who voted, while McCain came in fifth (behind Fred Thompson, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter), with just 11 percent. McCain did score big in one survey the GOP group did: 59 percent of the activists named him an “unacceptable candidate.”
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2008.
Fascinating article, Nintzel. I think Mike Hellon sums it up nicely about hard-line conservatives: “It’s the wacko end of our party — the people who have a whole litmus test of hard-nosed immigration issues and social issues.”
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Lest you be a centrist or Democrat and receive their flak.
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Is McCain a hardline conservative? I would say he’s more libertarian than kooky rightwing. Clinton, conversely, would be a basic socialist authoritarian. (Note this morning’s news she would consider forcing people to buy into universal health care by garnishing wages for naysayers — as if you are not allowed to be in control of your money.)
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Rambling into a new topic: The insurance issue — car insurance and health insurance are two very different things. If you are truly against mandatory car insurance, then don’t drive a car. However, if you are truly against mandatory health insurance, the only way out is to kill yourself, and that’s not a useful solution.
IPH: McCain ain’t no libertarian. He’s pro-life/anti-choice and opposed largely to gay rights. Nuff said.
True. X that last comment, I’m mislabeling.
McCain is a knob. When he wins the nomination, I look forward to watching people recount his Keating Five days.