What does a McCain win actually mean to the GOP?

According to this morning's Wash Post, the GOP was afraid of a McCain win just as they were in 2000. He is a liberal. Did you know that? Who would have thought?

GOP attack dogs Limbaugh and Delay worked feverishly to derail McCain and Huckabee from being nominated. They lost. Maybe some people just don't trust their "opinions" after 8 years of hell.

Limbaugh led the way with a verbal blitz, not just against McCain but against his closest rival in South Carolina, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

"I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it," Limbaugh fumed on his radio show Tuesday. It was a line of argument that he kept up all week long.

DeLay resurfaced on Fox News Friday to excoriate McCain for working with "the most liberal Democrats in the Senate," for passing an overhaul of campaign finance laws that "completely neutered the Republican Party," and single-handedly thwarted oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"McCain has done more to hurt the Republican Party than any elected official I know of," said DeLay, the former House majority leader, who was personally damaged by McCain's Senate probe of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a probe that implicated numerous DeLay associates.

The whole story is actually quite funny.

A related story at the Boston Globe shows how Lush's opinion influences listeners (but not S. Carolinians, obviously.) Lush was pushing for Mitt Romney.