Lush Windbag fumes…

To most any Democrat, both John McCain and Mike Huckabee are Republicans, and conservative Republicans at that. But to right-wing talk radio, neither McCain nor Huckabee is a true conservative, and the prospect of a McCain/Huckabee Republican ticket in November has Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity practically apoplectic.

Limbaugh is by far the biggest political talk show host on radio, and Hannity follows him every afternoon on ABC radio. Both Limbaugh and Hannity, along with a number of other right-wing talk radio hosts have been running what can only be called a campaign against McCain and Huckabee.

And while both Limbaugh and Hannity would reject the notion, it should be clear to any distanced observer that Super Tuesday constituted a big defeat for them and for the right-wing talk radio talking heads who seem to disdain Huckabee and who hate McCain with a passion.

“Now, after ten years of Senator McCain reaching out to the left and embracing the left in order to stab the back of his own party, he’s asking us to do what he has refused to do for the last ten years,” fumed Limbaugh on the afternoon of Super Tuesday.

“He’s asking us to put aside our differences and support the Republican Party,” Limbaugh continued. “Indeed, folks, he not only refused to put aside differences, he exploited them. He exploited these differences to create his own political persona and pander to the party opponents. Senator McCain got much more acclaim, much more respect, much more puff piece media treatment by reaching across the aisle and reaching out to Democrats.”

Hannity, who immediately follows Limbaugh’s show on ABC, almost invariably follows the Limbaugh party line in regularly excoriating McCain as well as Huckabee. On the day before Super Tuesday, Hannity actually declared McCain a “radical leftist/liberal.” Now, ignoring for the moment the huge difference between a ‘liberal’ and a ‘radical leftist’ in the lexicon of political scientists, Hannity’s claim is really extraordinary, considering McCain’s voting record in the Senate.

The American Conservative Union has given McCain a lifetime rating of 82.3, a very respectable rating in comparison with the Arizona senator’s Republican colleagues — comparable, for example, to the 89.% lifetime rating given to Orrin Hatch of Utah and the 88.1% given to Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, defeated in his re-election bid in 2006. And McCain does better than the 80.8% career rating that the ACU gives the retiring John Warner of Virginia or the 80.3% to Thad Cochran of Mississippi, neither of whom are regularly derided for being insufficiently conservative by right-wing talk radio.

While it’s true that McCain’s lifetime voting rating by the ACU falls very far short of that of Jon Kyl (at 96.9%), his Arizona senate colleague, the ACU rates McCain as far to the right of his Republican senate colleague from Alaksa, with Ted Stevens receiving a 64.5% career rating from the ACU, not to mention his Republican colleague from Pennsylvania, with Arlen Specter at a 44.7% ACU career rating.

And if McCain is indeed the ‘liberal’ that Hannity and Limbaugh declare him, it is worth considering how he could have received a lifetime rating of 82.3% in comparison with Hillary Clinton’s 9% or Obama’s 8%.

So while the Arizona senator may be vaguely moderate to liberal on a few issues — such as campaign finance reform, immigration, and torture — the truth is that McCain in most respects is a fairly conventional right-wing Republican, and not at all the ‘maverick’ or ‘independent’ that the mainstream media portray him as; and he is nothing like the caricature that the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity portray him as.

As for Mike Huckabee, his record as governor of Arkansas is more difficult to quantify with a rating system such as the ACU uses, as governors do not vote on legislation in the same way that members of Congress do. But as I’ve written before, while Huckabee is quite moderate — even liberal for a Republican — on social welfare issues such as education and fiscal policy, he is the only true standard bearer of the religious right, which is why he did so well on Super Tuesday in those states with large evangelical Christian populations.

Rush Limbaugh may insist that Huckabee is no conservative and deride the Arkansan as a ‘populist,’ but on social values issues — including same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights issues — he is as far right a Republican as one could find in elected office in the United States today.

And so that is the paradox of the war of words being waged by Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk against the likely standard bearers of their party. If the Republicans offer a McCain/Huckabee ticket, as I predict, the pointed question for right-wing talk radio hosts such as Limbaugh and Hannity will be whether they actually encourage their vast listening audience to vote third party or stay at home on November 7; if the vast army of ‘DittoHeads’ were to do that, they could well elect Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama president.