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All the petulant tantrums of the rightwing punditocracy threatening to take their votes and leave the GOP electoral sandbox (metaphorically speaking) has Keith Olbermann and guest E.J. Dionne talking about how discomfited the GOP is about voters -- rather than the party leaders -- driving the party:
KO: The one calculation that seems to overarch everything else in this, that Romney needs to win like three out of every four remaining delegates to win the nomination. It doesn’t seem like the far right is going to get Romney. They can’t abide McCain. They only less can’t abide Huckabee by a small margin. Who do they want then?
EJD: Ronald Reagan.
KO: Okay, that’s a problem there too.
EJD: Maybe Herbert Hoover. Um, no, I think what you’ve got here is that they understand that this would be the first time since 1980 that the conservative movement itself didn’t name the candidate and I think some of these guys would rather lose the election than to have the party in some other set of hands. Because you do look at these primaries and the dominant wing of the party is not going to pick the nominee. People voting for McCain are people who don’t like the Iraq War, people who don’t like President Bush, moderates and there’s even some liberals left in the Republican party. They’re voting for McCain, and then he’s adding on just enough conservatives to win, and so they don’t want that calculus--that kind of coalition--to be in control of the party