Super Tuesday

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. Conventional wisdom says the Dem nomination will not be settled tomorrow. In fact, Chris Bowers says it could be that the nomination will be determined not by voters, but by super delegates.

Meanwhile, it’s possible John McCain will sew up the GOP nomination tomorrow. Rush Limbaugh’s head will explode.

According to the McClatchy campaign blog

It’s an understatement to say that conservatives are not happy that John McCain has emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Radio talker Laura Ingraham today urged a platform fight to make sure McCain wouldn’t get his say on such issues as immigration or campaign finance regulation. Rush Limbaugh has said McCain’s nomination would turnoff so many conservatives it would destroy the Republican Party

Now, Human Events Online compares the early primary states that have launched McCain to the Axis of Evil in Iraq, Iran and Korea.

“The Republican Party has been hijacked,” says the article.

“Over the past month a new Axis of Evil has emerged – not one based in Damascus, Tehran or Pyongyang – but instead in Cedar Rapids, Charleston, South Carolina, Derry, New Hampshire and Boca Raton, Florida. It is the liberal and “independent” voters in these 4 states that have nearly completed a deed that makes Kim Jong Il envious -the near crippling of the American Electoral System.

“These four states have combined their native liberal populism with an imported liberal electorate and have forced the GOP to accept a nominee so distasteful that in more than one poll — the numbers of voters choosing not to vote and those choosing to vote third party actually exceed those who will hold their nose and vote for Maverick, War Hero, Amnesty Supporter, John McCain.”

Damn those voters.

Speaking of unhinged, Jim Nintzel writes at Salon

Right-wing talking heads, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin, have been seething about McCain for months. Limbaugh warned in January that if McCain gets the GOP nomination, “it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it. A lot of people aren’t going to vote.” …

… That kind of emotional reaction to McCain, if overheated, extends to plenty of other issues: [conservative activist Rob] Haney complains that the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation “takes away freedom of speech as guaranteed in the Constitution.” He’s angry that McCain would support tackling global warming with “all those treaties that turn over our sovereignty to other countries.” And he argues that McCain “has been the darling of the press for years,” masking what he refers to as the senator’s secret liberal record. “It’s an unending litany of items that we find unacceptable in a Republican candidate who would represent Republican values,” Haney says.

In reality, McCain’s voting record in the Senate is by most measures conservative. The American Conservative Union has given him a lifetime ranking of 82 percent, although his 2006 ranking was 65 percent. Conversely, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action reports that McCain voted its way just 14 percent of the time between 2000 and 2006.

However,

… what McCain may need most to overcome the spat with GOP hard-liners is the rallying cry that would accompany a Democratic primary win by Hillary Clinton.

Tomorrow’s vote may or may not clarify the will of the electorate. Ain’t nothin’ gonna clarify the minds of wingnuts.

Announcement

The big news is that I was recently contracted to be the Guide to Buddhism at About.com. Today it’s official.

The Buddhism section has been without a Guide for about a year, so that part of the About.com site is pretty much dead in the water and rough around the edges. It will take me a few weeks to get it up to standards.

My plan at the moment is to blog politics here but to blog religion and spirituality there. Since I’ll be on probation for the next three months, and since About.com likes very short blog posts, I probably won’t be writing one of my signature 5,000 treatises there anytime soon. However, there is a forum I’ll be riding herd on, and as soon as the About.com techies get some glitches ironed out I’ll set up some new categories. Feel free to start threads on anything having to do with spirituality, though.