You have heard about it: the strategy of Republicans voting for Hillary in order "keep Hillary in it so we can win it!" slogan of Rush Limbaugh. All the MSM—sadly including Fox which more and more often falls into line with the rest of the MSM in adopting their talkng points—is misrepresenting Rush as advocating this. In truth, Rush just picked up the slogan from a caller in order to encapsulate the attitude of Republicans who have been calling him to advocate this viewpoint. keep the Dem candidates.

(1) if the Dems continue to have to battle one another, then they will continue to attack and tear down one another and split their base between the pro-racists and the pro-feminists, the blacks and the Hispanics, and the young and the old.

Granted, this is fun to watch the "ist" party that constantly charges anyone who disagrees with them on anything, e.g. illegal immigration, affirmative action, national defense, educational vouchers, ad infinitum of some sort of evil "ism" turning on itself with racist and chauvinist attacks on one another. But does the fun of watching this (particularly for a talk show host) come without a cost?

(2) if the Dems have to battle one another until their convention, it keeps them from focussing on the Republican nominee in their constant politics of personal destruction for several months, and it gives the Republicans fodder from Clinton and Obama that Republicans can use in the fall campaign against either Dem nominee.

(3) such a continued battle will cause Hillary and Obama to have to dip into their huge campaign war chests to try to win more delegates, and therefore decreasing their huge advantage in fund-raising over John McCain.

(4) Hillary's unlikeable's make her far more beatable that Obama, who is immensely more likeable, pleasant, and because of his race is much more difficult to attack without having the charge rebound against the attacker as a seeming "racist".

I live in extremely "notorious" Williamson County that includes many suburbs of Austin which lies in neighboring Travis County. Just one example of Williamson County's conservative reputation: numerous policemen and sheriff's officers in Williamson County report to me stories of that frequently when they catching criminals in the small part of northwest Austin that lies within Williamson County only to have the criminals actually begin crying when they are informed their crime occurred in law and order Williamson County rather than liberal Travis County.

Also, Williamson County votes overwhelmingly Republican in contrast to the Dems huge majority in Travis County.

So, yesterday I went to my precinct polling place and for the first time in the eleven years that I have lived in Williamson County, their were a huge majority of people in line to vote Democrat. I was the one of four people in the Republican line and voting booths during the time it took me to sign in, get my ballot, vote, and talk to the precinct chair about the caucus meeting that was to occur later that evening.

The Republican precinct chair asked me when I went to their table to vote, "Aren't you going to be like all the other Republicans that are voting for Hillary—almost all our people are voting today to keep Hillary in the campaign." I have to admit, I seriously considered doing so, but for reasons I will discuss decided against doing so. After leaving the poll, I was so struck by this that I checked with a couple of other Republican precinct chairs and found them reporting the same phenomenon.

Without doing any statewide scientific polling, I believe this was a major factor in Hillary beating Obama in the popular count in Texas, which would also explain why Obama then won the Dem caucuses (sic—should be "cauci", but in an age of Dem controlled education, who can insist on these finer points of language?)—Republican voters who voted for Hillary of course could not have cared less about attending a Dem caucus.

I have a number of concerns with this strategy that cause me to fear that conservative Republicans could live to regret implementing it.

First, in spite of the positives of keeping the "gal vs. the pal fight going", it also comes at a cost in terms of media coverage. Already, the media coverage of McCain has dropped to almost irrelevant, as all the exciting stories are on the Dem side—not too much excitement on the Pub side of things with things all but settled for weeks. How many stories and interviews have you seen lately that have focussed on McCain.

The only thing that has received much attention at all on the Pub side was the old gray lady's (isn't it time to send her to the glue factory?) senile attack on John McCain. Though it worked in his favor, even that story did not get his issues and ideas out there.

Second, and to me more significantly, I do not believe that Hillary is more beatable than Obama, though it is clearly true that Obama so far appears far more likeable than is Hillary. As a matter of fact, it appears to me as Obama has been presented by an adoring press that, though I differ with him on almost every issue imaginable, I would love to have him as a neighbor or a golfing buddy.

The idea that Hillary is the more beatable of the two ignores five factors.

(1) The Clintons are at their best when down, and they keep winning when conservatives think that they are down and out. Look at Bill Clinton in '92 and '96 (we thought six months ahead of time that he dead and buried). And look at Hillary's Senatorial campaign in New York. None of us thought that with her temper and irritability that she could endure the pressures of an extended campaign for a major office without self-destructing in some sort of temperamental blow-up).

(2) This is due in part to their extremely protected and favorable media coverage whenever running against Republicans, and in part to their politics of personal destruction (assisted by coercion with information garnered from FBI files of many who might speak out against this tactic) and to their ever-present election eve scandalous revelations against their opponents in which the MSM collaborates in the timing in order deny the opponent the time necessary to effectively respond.

(3) The "Obama rock star" phenomenon is only two months old. Can this pop culture fad fantasy sustain itself for eight more months? I think it is highly unlikely, given the fact that it is based until now on an adoring press who has not asked him anything of substance, much less challenged him at all on any number of misrepresentations and cover-ups of his divisiveness, partisanship, and extremism which directly contradicts his rhetoric, e.g. the fact that he is the most extreme liberal and partisan voter against "bipartisan" bills in the Senate. There is evidence in the last two weeks that the "rock star" shooting star status of Obama is already coming to earth, as evidenced by:

(4) Obama's inexperience is already cracking the veneer. He has gotten into trouble by telling Canadian diplomats that his statements in Ohio that he would get rid of NAFTA were just political rhetoric in a campaign and did not mean anything without realizing that diplomats take notes on conversations and that these notes leak out to the press. Then when questioned repeatedly by the press about this, his good-natured smile became strained around the mouth, then disappeared altogether, and then he abruptly walked out on the press without any explanation.

This isn't horrific, but considering the fact that it is the first time he has been asked any real questions about ANY of the pie in the sky, nirvana, utopian language without any answers about how such a utopia can be paid for or accomplished in the face of adversaries in the world who wish to destroy us, it suggests that he will not do well in a real campaign battle in which ideas will not just be thrown out, but will be questioned and debated.

Additonally, questions are starting to be asked about his campaign financing being far from clean as the pure driven snow. his connections with communists and his friendliness to totalitarian dictatorships and fascists who wish to destroy Israel. None of this bodes well for an extended Obama campaign.

(5) Obama, unlike Hillary, doesn't lie about his leftist extremism. This makes him popular with the Dem Underground base, but the general public including many of the historic yellow-dog Dems like the labor unions are going to hear a lot of radical ideas in debates with John McCain that will greatly alarm them in ways akin to the ways they were alarmed by George McGovern in 1972. Obama is not much more radical than the Clintons, but is less pragmatic. The Clintons will lie about what they believe, and will even turn their policies on a dime, in order to retain personal political power. Obama at least seems far more ideological and committed. Which makes him far less electable.

None of this even considers the weaknesses of John McCain in his ability to win back the Republican base after years of opposing the base's overwhelming concern with alliances with Teddy Kennedy and other radical leftists in undermining the base's most cherished issues. That is a story of huge concern in its own right.

In summary, I think Hillary can win, and the skill of the Cllinton's in campaign tricks, coercion, coopting the media, and the politics of personal destruction scares me to death that she very well could beat John McCain in order to become the most disliked ignauguree in American history, leaving Republicans who voted to help to keep fighting living with unbelievable dismay and regret for having engaged in such a tactic. Me? I cast my protest vote for Duncan Hunter.