Right-Wing McCain Hate... A Strategy?

As the scattered Huckabee victories this past week showed, the anyone-but-McCain GOP voter base is very large.

And because I am cynical, I can't help but wonder what the real motive is behind all this right-wing anger at Sen. McCain (coming from the establishment, I mean, not from the grassroots voters). How much is genuine anger that he doesn't wanna build a huge brick wall across the Mexican border, and how much is something more cynical? After all, someone like Rush Limbaugh doesn't have any actual principles or beliefs to be betrayed by McCain... Limbaugh admitted after the '06 midterm election losses that he was just a shill for the GOP.

So what gives? I came to a potential answer after rereading an old entry from after said midterm. Mark Noonan, at Blogs for Bush, was celebrating the victory of conservatism... in having lost the election. You see, the election was decided solely by conservatives mad that their GOP leaders had failed them, and now conservatism could begin a new era of kicking ass! It wasn't that voters rejected the President, his party, and their failed policies... no way! Voters loved conservatism; they just wanted to prove how much by purging its heretics from within the party. Or so the logic went.

And so perhaps all this McCain bashing-- with conservative promises of 'suicide votes' for Sen. Clinton-- is a preemptive strike along those lines. Even many party loyalists have acknowledged that their odds of winning this election aren't great. But the Limbaughs and Hannitys and Malkins can't accept that their ideology and party is being rejected in favor of a more positive, and progressive, direction (because conservatism can never fail). And so, they will insist that voters wanted to vote for the Republicans-- to keep terrorists from killing us all and raising our taxes-- but that McCain was just too horrible. Should've nominated Romney/Giuliani/Thompson instead and the election would've been won in a landslide! Time to fight the new, illegitimate Democratic president and prepare for the era of reborn, victorious conservatism.

Now, I'm not saying this is the case. I'm just brainstorming out loud here.