No, he was every Democrat's favorite Republican (to borrow a phrase from Cruz, he's nice and housebroken and polite). They loved him and talked him up big. John Stewart's favorite elephant. Course all that kneecapping of conservatives and bipartisan love fest crap didn't help him at all. As soon as he was the nominee they laid into him (as they did with Romney and will do with Trump). ANY Republican is going to be painted as a puppy-eating baby-rapist that puts kittens in a blender for fun, so trying to reach across the aisle to people that hate us doesn't seem to work to me.
As for the silent majority of conservatives, it seems more like a 40+ percent plurality from what I hear. That's more than self identify as moderate, or as liberal. Yes, one needs to grab Reagan Democrats, but both Cruz AND Trump are vulnerable on that to me. Cruz voted for that crap trade bill, and Trump plays the "jobs Americans won't do" card (like McCain did during the pre Obama amnesty push.). But the main point I'm making is go after the conservatives hardest, they have the largest numbers. Being worried to death about crossover Dems and indies(Romney won indies, big whoop) is what got us in this mess in the first place.
No, he was every Democrat's favorite Republican ...
McCain got lots of love from the media like Stewart and MSNBC yes, but it was along the lines of a war hero or POW, and they naturally were cheering the Bush43 hating maverick. This was 8 years ago, and there was no Barry yet pushing invaders into Arizona and fighting with the Governor and challenging them on state matters with McCain turncoating on his own peeps. What you saw in 2008 was the residual media lovefest making up to McCain for his defeat by Bush43 8 years prior to that, and needless to say they were predictably on board until the magic negro came along.
What did not happen was McCain running as a non-partisan or bi-partisan outsider without strong ties to either half of the uniparty like Trump. This is what your weak analogy attempted to state. They are more like opposites, McCain on puppet strings controlled by the GOPe, and Trump on the other end of the strings dangling puppets from both parties. Whatever, believe what you want. I'm just gonna keep on insisting that this is something completely different and you'd have to go back to Perot or maybe Teddy Roosevelt to come close to a proper parallel.
As for the silent majority of conservatives, it seems more like a 40+ percent plurality from what I hear.
Yeah, no. But I sure do know where that myth comes from, Rush! His data is frozen circa 1984.
Now just think about it. If 40% of the electorate was actually Conservatives then you are literally stating that there are no such things as RINOs or moderate and liberal (R)epublicrats! That's because 40% is close to *all* the (R)epublicrats that even exist and you just assigned them all the (C) label. And there ain't enough blue (D)ogs left to make up the difference in the other party. Rush is a champion master of common core math even though it is patently impossible for that number to ever be true.
Furthermore, you also must make believe that for the past 51 years since LBJ's 1965 Great Society and restarted Immigration that there has been no consequence. Unfortunately there has been a great consequence. Each day that has elapsed since then sees us die off and get replaced by naturalized invaders and natural born welfare rats. The demographic shift is clearly visible in the red/blue state paradigm, the electoral college, the popular vote, and everywhere else we have a metric.
We were founded with an apocryphal ( but likely true ) philosophical division of 1/3 patriot, 1/3 traitor, 1/3 too retarded to decide. That 33-33-33 percent paradigm is roughly correlated to (R)-(D)-(I) or (C)-(L)-(I) with the numbers bouncing around a bit. In 1984 it was pretty much agreed that (R)-(D)-(I) was around 40-30-30 after Reagan's big landslide, but it has been a linear trend down for us every day since. Honestly, we (C)onservatives who are a mere subset of (R)epublicrats ( remember, blue dogs are nearly extinct ) *might* be one quarter, and it means we are outnumbered by (D)ummies and (L)iberals and (I)ndependents and (S)ocialists and know nothings by 4 to 1. Worse yet, my gut tells me we are likely closer to 1/5th or maybe 20%, outnumbered 5 to 1.
This is the damage Rush has caused us by his pontificating with lack of any current information. It suppresses turnout, it leads us to believe we can nominate anybody, and then act all surprised when the returns roll in on election night and it is 338-200. It is the most wicked case of wishful thinking and needs to be stopped now, or we are going to lose this one, and there will not be another real election once the enemy has their 270 electoral votes locked up even before an election occurs.
Rush was a William F. Buckley sycophant, and it shows. But he has actually managed to even screw that up. What Buckley actually said about the primary process was: "Elect the most conservative candidate who can win", and unfortunately Rush and Levin and the rest stopped reading after the first half and skipped the bold part. Buckley also said: "I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University". Now this is a good approximation of what is happening with an outsider like Trump. Buckley may get his wish yet, though ironically it would seem that it conflicts with the wishes of Rush and Levin.