Republicans for Hillary

Jack Cafferty at CNN blogs about the phenomenon of 100,000 Republicans coming out and voting for Hillary Clinton:

There’s no doubt the 2008 campaign has been full of twists and surprises, and here’s one more: Republicans are coming out in huge numbers to vote for Hillary Clinton.

That’s right. About 100,000 Republicans came out to support Clinton in Ohio. 119,000 voted for her in Texas, and 38,000 in Mississippi.

The Boston Globe reports on why this is happening: Some Republicans are supporting Clinton hoping it will prolong her bitter fight for the nomination with Barack Obama. Others think Clinton would be an easier opponent for John McCain to beat in November. And still others are voting for Clinton because they want to keep her in the race to expose more information about Obama ahead of the general election.

Consider this: up until recently, Obama was getting a lot more support than Clinton was from Republicans in the primary contests. At the time, many traditional GOP voters said they liked Obama and were willing to cross party lines. But, once McCain sealed the deal with his party’s nomination, things started to change. In Texas and Ohio, more than double the number Republicans turned out to vote in those Democratic contests than in earlier ones – and Clinton ran about even with Obama in both states.

Some loud voices within the party – like conservative radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham – have been actively calling on Republican voters to do just this. For example, Limbaugh said Republicans should vote for Clinton “if they could stomach it” since it is so important to “sustain the soap opera” between Clinton and Obama.

Republicans were turning out for Obama early on because they saw it as a way to end Hillary's campaign altogether. Once it became obvious that the Dems had created a system in which neither candidate was going to win outright, it became important to keep the race close and the fight going, so Republicans switched to help the then fading Hillary Clinton. The whole thing has worked marvelously well to this point.

I know that some of my GOP brethren are concerned that unless you drive a stake into Hillary's heart (assuming you can find it) and knock her out now, she could somehow manage to pull off a win in November. And, since John McCain seems intent on running a collegial campaign free of attacks on his opponents, and of course Hillary will not do the same, I can understand their fears. However, Hillary still has a negative rating of somewhere around 49% and as one commenter described it "more dirty laundry than the Playboy mansion", so it's hard to see how she could still be viable against McCain come November.

There are some Democrats who have their knickers in a knot over this cross-voting, even to the point of suggesting that there are violations of the law involved (they quote the requirement in Ohio that a voter must assert "in good faith" that they support the party they are registering with). However, John McCain is the GOP nominee because Dems and Independents crossed over in early open primaries and voted for McCain while most Republicans split their votes among more conservative candidates. Fair's fair.

In the meantime, let the games continue! Pennsylvania Republicans - you have to register as a Dem by March 24th to add your vote to Hillary's totals in April.