With his Florida primary victory over chief rival former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Arizona Senator John McCain is now seemingly the GOP’s front-runner for the 2008 Presidential nomination, but he still faces a foe that’s determined to pull out all stops and to shout warnings to try and stop him: conservative talk radio.

On a 500 mile drive Tuesday from San Diego to Yuba City (where this is being written), I listened to hours and hours of conservative talk radio — at least five programs. And if you tuned in not knowing who McCain was, you’d swear they were talking about Democratic Senator Teddy Kennedy.

The anger towards McCain seemed even angrier than the usual fury directed at conservative talkers’ favorite subject, New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

Many talk radio hosts, enjoying legions of loyal listeners who trust their favorite hosts, want to stop McCain who they paint as a Democrat in Republican’s clothing, not conservative enough and — even worse — someone who will actually work with Democrats such as Kennedy. Their biggest fear: he’ll get in and do what he wants which won’t be what he’s promises during the campaign. On balance: they don’t trust him one bit.

Why does it matter?

Conservative talkers such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Reagan and others serve an important role in GOP politics. Their shows are rallying points and the ideological conventional wisdom is transmitted from there. Conservative talk radio has become the real “town hall” of the Republican party. The Democratic left is most potent on weblogs; the Republican conservatives have talk radio down to a fine art (just as progressives do not).

Even though it’s clear McCain is winning despite the talkers’ opposition, the question becomes: could continued opposition from talkers cause some Republican voters to stay home in November?

This raises the prospect that McCain could be backed by many in the GOP establishment but face a mutiny in at least part of part of his party’s base, led by angry talk show hosts.

Several hosts had callers call in yesterday and say whether they would ever vote for McCain. Some were almost yelling when talking about the Arizona Senator and insisting they’d never EVER vote for him.

The list of his “sins”: his stance on immigration, his opposition to torture, his position on campaign finance reform, his early statements and votes on the tax cuts. All mentioned as a negative the fact he enjoys support from independent voters and Democrats. Several talk show hosts called McCain a “liberal.”

But the talk show hosts — who are actually in most cases highly talented show people who know how to do a good, compelling broadcast that gets and holds and audience — are not the entire Republican party. And as the New Hampshire and Florida McCain wins show, Republicans across the country aren’t exactly falling all over themselves trying to obey talk show hosts’ preferences.

More likely than not, now that McCain won the Florida primary and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuilani is reportedly poised to pull out of the race and endorse him (sparking speculation Rudy might be McCain’s Veep or server in a McCain cabinet) many in the Republican establishment will gravitate behind McCain…particularly if he stacks up some convincing victories on Super Tuesday.

But talk radio’s opposition could STILL hurt McCain.

Some of the hosts and listeners say there is no way they will ever vote for McCain. He is demonized (complete with the angry, rage-toned voice of callers and hosts) much as Democrats are (or as Republicans are demonized on some progressive talk shows that are mirror images of conservative talk radio). A barrage of negative verabal imagery won’t help get the party faithful to the polls.

This suggests in 2008 there could be a split in the GOP that could actually be more profound than the Democrats’ ongoing Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama tensions.

McCain is arousing ideological-based passions on the party’s right. Indeed, the anger, the vows never to support him, sarcasm and fury seem similar to 1968 when then Vice President Hubert Humphrey got the Democratic Presidential nomination and many of the Democrats’ anti-war left, followers of then Senator Eugene McCarthy, and followers of assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, angrily refused to support Humphrey.

There is a PERSONAL and an IDEOLOGICAL opposition to McCain within his own party. And there are no signs of it diminishing among the true believers on the party’s right.

Others have noticed the talk radio “war” against McCain, too.

The Washington Times:

Conservative talk radio is ganging up on presidential candidate John McCain, attacking him for joining Democrats to push liberal legislation and opposing bedrock Republican positions from tax cuts to immigration.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney appears to be the favorite of conservative talk-radio stars and stands to benefit from their distaste for the Arizona senator, who is running neck and neck with Mr. Romney in the race for the presidential nomination.

While most polls show the two men in a dead heat in key primary and caucus contests across the nation, the campaign battle on talk radio has turned into a lopsided offensive against Mr. McCain, whose positions on illegal aliens, President Bush’s tax cuts, oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and campaign-finance regulation have infuriated conservative commentators.

“I don’t think talk radio has changed their core views. Look at Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, Mark Levin and myself, all center-right conservatives generally supportive of the Republicans,” talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt told The Washington Times.

The AP:

John McCain heads into Tuesday’s Florida primary facing resistance from not only his fellow candidates, but also from the leaders of conservative talk radio, who some suggest have put their reputations on the line, as well.

Talk radio pioneer Rush Limbaugh said that if McCain or Mike Huckabee are nominated, “it’s going to destroy the Republican Party.” Mark Levin calls the senator “John McLame.” On Monday, Laura Ingraham said she was “concerned about the mental stability of the McCain campaign” and had cuckoo-clock sound effects accompany his words.

“Sen. McCain is a great American, a lousy senator and a terrible Republican,” Hugh Hewitt told The Associated Press. “He has a legislative record that is not conservative. In fact, it is anti-conservative.”

Yet with McCain winning primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney for the lead in polls in Florida, the top radio personalities are facing the possibility that their words are having little effect.

Radio host Michael Medved said that the big loser in South Carolina was talk radio, “a medium that has unmistakably collapsed in terms of impact, influence and credibility because of its hysterical and one-dimensional involvement in the GOP nomination fight.”

Its continued resistance to McCain will be ineffective and will hurt both the Republican Party and the radio industry, Medved said.

The Weekly Standard’s Dean Barnett:

In spite of nearly universal animosity in the talk radio community, John McCain has prospered in the early primary states. This has led many commentators, including popular talk radio host Michael Medved, to declare talk radio “the big loser” in South Carolina.

It’s worth pointing out that Medved, virtually alone amongst his chattering peers (and I include myself in that category as Hugh Hewitt’s regular fill-in), views the McCain campaign without hostility. Nevertheless, his conclusion regarding talk radio’s lack of influence still has to be considered what lawyers would call an “admission against interest.” Like McCain’s favored approach, Medved’s analysis would seem a fine example of straight talk.

To buy his conclusion, though, one would first have to believe that talk radio wielded a disproportionate amount of influence, influence that inexplicably vanished amidst a South Carolina winter. Speaking from my experience behind the microphone, I would strongly dispute that conservative talk radio leads national opinion or even conservative opinion. We’re factors in the conversation, but we don’t lead it. The interests and concerns of the people lead the conversation. It’s truly a bottom-up phenomenon.

Conservatives didn’t need talk radio hosts to discover their antipathy towards the McCain/Kennedy reform. I pinch-hit for Hewitt several times while that debate raged. Whenever I tried to steer the discussion to anything other than the immigration dispute (merely to disrupt the monotony of talking about the same issue for three hours a day for days on end), the phone lines would die. Most of the listeners who called in would hang up; those who decided to dial in anyway did so to discuss immigration, even though I had changed the subject. I’m pretty sure all conservative talk show hosts found the same thing. The month of June 2007 was all-immigration-all-the-time on the air. The listeners had made up their minds on the merits of McCain/Kennedy before a single talk show host had said a word.

And, he could be correct. It’s part of the unfortunate trend where many people only want to hear or read what they already agree with. Viewed in that context, conservative talk could be seen as belief affirmation and reinforcement, but that may be too simplistic a view.

The bottom line: it’s unlikely that if McCain gets the nomination and fails to smooth over conservative talkers’ noses out of joint that it will help his campaign.

This raises an interesting scenario.

For all of the controversy the past few weeks, if Senator Hillary Clinton can keep her husband Bill off caffeine and under wraps (and there were signs Tuesday that it was happening) then in the end the party could come together whether she gets the nomination or Senator Barack Obama. There are differences among Democrats, but it’s not some huge, raw ideological sore.

But the fury in the Republican party over McCain seemingly runs deep — raising the prospect that the real problem in 2008 won’t be Democratic unity but the Republicans keeping the Reagan coalition together. Talk radio could help keep it together, or help further splinter it.

The irony is this: some of the talk show hosts yesterday blasting McCain and seeming sympathetic to Romney were blasting Romney’s conservative creds just a few months ago.

If McCain does get the nomination, he can’t let the bleeding coming from the Republican broadcast studios go on forever. The Democrats want to be in the White House so badly they can taste it, polls show the American public wants a change, and the Republican party as a “brand name” under George Bush has almost become as popular as toys from China. He’ll need every vote all of the positive imagery surrounding him and his campaign that he can get.

Can McCain make peace with his angry foes on the right?

Or, perhaps more accurately, the question is, will they allow him to make peace with them?

And, if they don’t, will talk radio be more marginalized than ever? Stay tuned. Literally..