Right Wingers for Hillary

So after all the hoopla about how Hillary had a big comeback last night let's try to keep this in perspective. According to Daily Kos this morning, the delegate wins from last night were Hillary 185, Obama 184. That's a net of +1 Delegates for Hillary. Plus Obama's campaign last night was touting how they had about 40 or 50 Superdelegates they were going to roll out that would pretty much even up the Superdelegate score.

That pretty much means for Hillary to pull this out she's going to need to win Pennsylvania and get Florida and Michigan to have new primaries. If she does and wins those by 10-15 points each, she has a good chance to be close to the delegate lead come Convention time in August and that's what will matter most. Superdelegates are not static support and can leave at any time. If it looks as if Obama has a sizeable enough lead they will go for Obama at the Convention because they don't want to face their electorate as going against the will of the people.

If it's close they don't feel any overriding obligation to the "will of the people" and can vote with their loyalty over their constituency.

The problem I see for Obama is this. The Republican primaries are now a formality. McCain has won and clinched enough delegates to become the nominee. Republicans in the states that are still left to vote will have nothing to vote for on their side so they may want to interject themselves into the Democratic race in hopes of helping their party.

It happened yesterday and might be the reason Hillary won Ohio and Texas.

Obama has been really good at drawing crossover Republicans who are tired of their party and the politics of George W. Bush. Hillary however has no such appeal to them.

They see her as an extension of Bill and his Sex Scandals. They hate the Clintons for beating them in the 1990s in the face of those scandals being so openly presented to destroy them. They believe her being the nominee will galvanize the Republican base and get them to vote when McCain by himself is not an energizing enough candidate to draw the right wing base (especially evangelicals) in.

They also see voting for Hillary in the Democratic Primary as a way to as Fox News put it this morning, "bloody up" Obama before a General Election. Not to mention spend another 7 weeks spending money and attacking one another while they can sit back and fundraise for McCain.

On the flip side there is no motivation to vote for Obama for this reason. They know Obama does not bring out the polarizing hatred that Hillary does and that his calm demeanor and appeal to across the aisle togetherness is attractive to moderate Republicans who are tired of the same old politics in Washington. They also know McCain's only real strength is his appeal to moderates and he would lose that battle to Obama in a major way come the general election.

So when I see that Republicans in Texas voted for Obama 52-47 it's not the 52 that alarms me. Like I said earlier he's getting crossovers who will stay with him in the general election. It's that 47 percent of Republicans who hate the Clintons, voted for her.

Especially when you consider that Rush Limbaugh openly campaigned for Republicans to vote for Hillary in the primaries. They truly feel this will put Democrats in a weak position and get all of the evangelicals out that hate her but would stay home if Obama ran.

In Ohio this number of Republicans voting for each candidate was 49-49. There's no way that this many Republicans would vote for Hillary if they were not trying to screw with the election in some way.

One only needs to look at how Republicans came out and voted for Joe Lieberman in Connecticut after spending years of trying to defeat him. They saw that Democrats had voted for an anti-war liberal to take Holy Joe's seat and they wanted to make sure that Democrats were stuck with a war mongering enemy of the party.

Obviously that was different in terms that it was a general election in Connecticut but similar in that they had nobody to vote for themselves so they came out and voted for whomever would weaken the Democrats the most. In doing so Lieberman became a huge thorn in the side of liberals and Democrats alike. In a one vote majority in the Senate, Lieberman was able to keep chairmanships of committees (if they stripped him he would declare himself a Republican which would give majority rule and leadership of ALL committees to the GOP) and has granted Bushco a pass by not conducting a single oversight hearing.

Republicans knew this going into that election and only voted for Joe because they knew it would hurt their enemies.

Last night was more of the same.

Fox News was bragging this morning about Republicans purposely following Limbaugh's plan and voting for Hillary and said they had over 1,200 responses from Republican emailers who took credit for doing such a thing.

Expect more of this for the rest of the primaries. Republicans have nothing better to do and voting for Hillary is voting for a better chance that they win in November.

But hey with Hillary's tactics of late she might as well be a Republican anyway.

Take for example this fun note from last night:

ABC News' Kate Snow and Eloise Harper report: A controversial party guest was spotted at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's election night party in Columbus, Ohio Tuesday.

He was hard to miss. He was the one wearing the "Osama for Obama" t-shirt.

Columbus resident Todd Elbaum told ABC News his friend makes the t-shirts.

Elbaum did not hold back on his views of Obama when he was interviewed by ABC within full view of a Clinton staffer.

"The truth is he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim, his mother married a Muslim after divorcing his father. His grandfather was a Muslim. It doesn't matter. But what does matter is when Obama said he was never a Muslim. He was a Muslim. He was born a Muslim. He was a Muslim for six years of his life," Elbaum said.

Nice. Hillary for Right Wingers.... and Right Wingers for Hillary.

-Rp