It should be interesting to see what happens to McCain’s and Huckabee’s numbers now that Romney has unexpectedly pulled out of the race. Are Romney people the more religious segment of the party? How many are people who simply won’t accept McCain? How will Romney’s numbers be split between the two remaining candidates? It’ll be three days before the Gallup daily tracking polls have a full sampling on the split, but it should be interesting.

Also interesting is the sheer vehemence of the Republicans who simply cannot accept McCain. Several conservatives have already stated publicly that if it’s McCain vs. Hillary, they’d vote for Hillary. When McCain spoke at the conservative CPAC convention (where Ann Coulter last year called Edwards a “faggot”), the audience booed McCain–even though they were explicitly instructed not to boo him. Just the fact that they felt it necessary to admonish the crowd not too boo their front-runner in the first place is pretty telling of how much open revolt there is to his candidacy.

And that in itself is pretty amazing, considering that McCain is pretty conservative. He’s moderate on the budget and on immigration, but is firmly anti-choice, likes strict constructionists, is anti-union, anti-gay-marriage, anti-civil rights, pro-death penalty, is a hawk on war issues, and is the man on Iraq… so why do conservatives hate him so much? Do they look back to 2000 and think that he’s a liberal in conservative clothing? If so, they’re wrong–he was no more liberal back then than he is now, that was just an image of moderation, without actually being too much of a moderate.

To see just how conservatives see John McCain, see the “accidental” caption that Fox Noise put on McCain’s video clip (look at the party affiliation):

That’s the caption they put on Republicans who are exposed as sex offenders. Um, okay.