“One Little Hour”

Recently on the Fox News show Hannity and Colmes Ann Coulter said that she would vote for Hillary Clinton over John McCain in the general election. Apparently she believes that Hillary Clinton is more conservative than John McCain. In typical Coulter fashion she drowned out Hannity when he attempted to compare their opinions on issues like healthcare and Iraq. Here is the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTqgqhxVMc

Calling Clinton more conservative than McCain is silly on the face of it, so I don’t intend to spend much time on Coulter’s accusation besides a few pertinent observations. The liberal benchmark group Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) publishes a voting record for the Senate each year giving a percentage rating of how liberal each senator was. John McCain has never even come close to receiving a higher rating than Mrs. Clinton. 2006: Hillary Clinton - 95%. John McCain - 15%. And from the other side of the aisle the American Conservative Union rewarded Clinton with a lifetime conservative rating of 9% and McCain with an 82.3%.

Apparently Miss Coulter used to work for Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham on immigration issues. So her dislike of McCain probably has to do with his “liberal” immigration stance more than anything else.

But there is an interesting question here. Would rank and file conservatives turn out to vote for McCain in the general election? I doubt many would go so far as to vote for the Democratic candidate whether Obama or Hillary, but conservative apathy would also work against McCain. It will be fun to watch whether the conservative cry of 2007, “Anybody but Hillary!” [remember why www.bju.edu had to put up a disclaimer about political endorsements?], will carry over into 2008.

If conservative apathy became a serious problem would McCain be able to attract enough independents into his camp without a fired up base?