WILL RUSH LIMBAUGH ENDORSE A DEMOCRAT?

The far right extremists who run the Republican Newsmax site reported that Rush Limbaugh not only detests all the pathetic pygmies running to replace Bush this year, but that he may even vote for a Democrat. Short of a reactionary like Jim Marshall or a turncoat like Lieberman or Zell Miller, I can't see that happen, but it's fine with me if he shares his misgivings with all the little dittoheads who listen to his propaganda broadcasts. On Monday Limbaugh-- who may have been on Oxy again-- said, "I can see possibly not supporting the Republican nominee this election, and I never thought that I would say that in my life."

He points out that none of them are far enough to the right for his bizarre tastes. “You don’t have a genuine down-the-list conservative... Wherever you go here in this roster of candidates, you're going to be able to point out ‘not conservative, what he did there is not conservative’” whined the bloviating, self-important clown. "I'm telling ya, it's gonna come down to which guy do we dislike the least. And that's not necessarily good... I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [McCain or Huckabee] get the 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. You watch.” We will, we will.

It can hardly come as a surprise to anyone who saw Newt Gingrich dub the whole pack of them the "Pathetic pygmies," watched as None of The Above won every Republican poll, and then saw dismally low turn-outs in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, and South Carolina-- while every caucus and primary the Democrats have had drew record breaking numbers-- that Republicans are aghast at the low quality candidates they're stuck with this year. Limbaugh is often wrong but this is something he's gotten right.

Today's NY Times reports that it isn't only the rank and file but that all the other Republican candidates really loathe Willard.

“Never get into a wrestling match with a pig,” Senator John McCain said in New Hampshire this month after reporters asked him about Mr. Romney. “You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

Mike Huckabee’s pugilistic campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, appeared to stop just short of threatening Mr. Romney with physical violence at one point.

“What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process,” Mr. Rollins said.

Campaign insiders and outside strategists point to several factors driving the ill will, most notably, Mr. Romney’s attacks on opponents in television commercials, the perception of him as an ideological panderer and resentment about his seemingly unlimited resources as others have struggled to raise cash.

...“The glee the other candidates go after Romney with is really unique,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist who worked on Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign bid in 2000 but is not affiliated with any campaign now.

...Mr. Schnur used a schoolyard analogy to compare Mr. Romney, the ever-proper Harvard Law School and Business School graduate, to Mr. McCain, the gregarious rebel who racked up demerits and friends at the Naval Academy.

“John McCain and his friends used to beat up Mitt Romney at recess,” Mr. Schnur said.

Romney is the least likely to be picked by anyone to be a vice president or even a cabinet member. And no one who drops out considers endorsing him. (Yesterday, in fact, Duncan Hunter gave his worthless endorsement to The Huckster.) Romney has spent the most money of any other candidate but in race after race, the more voters see of him, the less they like him.

Meanwhile, Florida has turned into a two-man race. The Huckster is broke and can't afford to campaign in a state with expensive media markets and Giuliani has proven himself to be the absolute worst strategist in the history of presidential politics. The latest Florida polls show that he's barely even a blip on the radar-- and a fading one at that-- even after putting all his chips on Florida.

Rudy Giuliani has hit the skids in a Florida freefall that could shatter his presidential campaign and leave a two-man Republican contest in the state between John McCain and Mitt Romney, a Miami Herald poll shows.

Despite hovering over Florida voters for weeks, Giuliani is tied for third place with the scarcely visible Mike Huckabee in a statewide poll of 800 likely voters.

With his poll numbers slipping back home in the Northeast, Giuliani's campaign will implode if he can't turn it around in the six days left before Florida's Jan. 29 vote, the final gateway before a blitz of primaries around the nation that could sew up the race.

A St Petersburg Times poll shows the race shaping up like this today:

McCain- 25%
Willard- 23%
Huckabee- 15%
Giuliani- 15%

"Giuliani's decision to pull out of the early states is going to go down in history if he finishes out of the money in Florida as one of the worst political decisions,'' said pollster Tom Eldon. Giuliani will be lucky if he doesn't lose to Ron Paul... again.

Meanwhile, loony right-wing bloggers are chattering about how the big-name Republican Party propagandists, who provide them with all their "thoughts," are all bailing on the pygmies. Hannity, Beck and Coulter have joined Limbaugh on the war-path, especially against McCain. Coulter went on an hysterical anti-McCain rampage yesterday:

John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth. Like McCain, pollsters assured us that Dole was the most "electable" Republican. Unlike McCain, Dole didn't lie all the time while claiming to engage in Straight Talk.

Of course, I might lie constantly too, if I were seeking the Republican presidential nomination after enthusiastically promoting amnesty for illegal aliens, Social Security credit for illegal aliens, criminal trials for terrorists, stem-cell research on human embryos, crackpot global warming legislation and free speech-crushing campaign-finance laws.

I might lie too, if I had opposed the Bush tax cuts, a marriage amendment to the Constitution, waterboarding terrorists and drilling in Alaska.