Don’t overplay your hand… or, be careful what you wish for?

I have mixed feelings on the internal strife in the Democratic Party that is supposedly causing a notable percentage of Hillary backers to openly support John McCain for president.

[Wall Street Journal] Clinton supporters, disillusioned by their candidate’s narrow loss, have been showing up in the McCain camp, and Sen. McCain has stepped up his effort to woo more — including strategists who worked for the Democrat. One former Clinton aide is helping the Republicans identify and win over former Clinton voters. The Republican National Committee even held a “Happy Hour for Hillary” in Denver where McCain volunteers mingled with disgruntled Clinton backers.

…There were signs that even some party luminaries loyal to Sen. Clinton were less than passionately committed to the nominee-in-waiting. Several high-level Clinton fund-raisers, including former campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, plan to leave Denver before Sen. Obama delivers his anticipated acceptance speech before 75,000 people in a football stadium. Mr. McAuliffe said he was heading home for his daughter’s birthday.

The August Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll4 found just 52% of Clinton primary voters now say they plan to vote for Sen. Obama. An additional 21% say they will support Republican Sen. McCain, with the rest undecided or not planning to vote.

On the one hand, I’m thinking Republicans and the McCain camp need to not overplay their hand. If they get too brazen in their attempt to keep the Democrats split it could backfire. And, frankly, I don’t yet believe that come election day Obama is going to lose 48% of Clinton backers. Oh sure, they’re complaining now, but I just don’t see them either not showing or pulling the lever for McCain come election day.

Then, on the other hand, I worry that they do, and if they do, what does that say about the conservative character of John McCain, and what does that say of the very nature of the Republican party?

I’m a little uncomfortable that so many Democrats could be so comfortable putting a supposed conservative in office. Yes, there’s their boneheaded strategy that Hillary could run again sooner (2012 as opposed to 2016, if at all), and there’s the fact that Ronald Reagan — a former Democrat turned Republican who famously quipped that his party “left him” and not vice versa — won two landslides in part with votes from lifelong Democrats.

But even so, when I post a lenghty rant (yesterday) ridiculing the lack of science behind global warming, only to read today that my Republican party might do the same as Democrats, during its convention next week, by providing “a first-ever plank on global warming,” stating that, “While the scope and long term consequences of this warming effect are the subject of ongoing research, we believe the United States should take measured and reasonable steps today,” I just want to hurl my breakfast.

A party platform of “Hey there’s some very debatable science here, but let’s go ahead and foul up the economy anyway with a bunch of growth-retarding carbon trading policies” (the precautionary principle) shouldn’t be high on any fiscally conservative’s mind.

Couple that with McCain’s typically populist language of “taking on big oil, and drug companies” — two entities that have done more to empower the wealth and health ability of Americans than any politician has ever done — or shopping Sen. Joseph Lieberman as a potential running mate, and one has to wonder just what kind of Republican brand might take office. (I love Lieberman’s no nonsense moral clarity on foreign policy, but were he ever to become president it would take decades to undo his economic damage to fiscal conservatives, not to mention what the federal judicial appointees or Supreme Court might become).

This election doesn’t seem to be between the Republican versus Democrats, but between the Republicrats or Demoicans versus the Obamanation Socialist party.