'Today' to McCain: Why Move Right?

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Mooch-a-mas grassas! That was Ted Kennedy -- the man who brought you "Mike McGwire and Sammy Sooser" -- thanking a California crowd. View here. Now we know why he paid someone back at Harvard to take that Spanish exam.

John McCain might want to borrow that snippet of smashed Spanish from his amnesty bill buddy to thank Today. The NBC show this morning depicted the Republican primary race as all but over with the GOP establishment coalescing around the Arizona senator. And for good measure, weekend co-host Lester Holt threw in some campaign consulting, gratis, counseling McCain against moving right to appeal to the conservative base.

Holt interviewed Chris Matthews. View video here.

LESTER HOLT: Why does McCain care about courting to the right at this point? If he's so close to wrapping up the nomination in this case, and he's looking down toward November, it's not like the conservatives are going to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, are they?

Matthews manifested a better grasp on Republican politics.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, you have people like Rush Limbaugh on the radio just blasting away at him. He has two big problems that I can see he has to overcome to win against Hillary or Obama in November. He has to deal with the cultural base of the party: very pro-life, very anti-tax, very anti-government in many ways, very Second Amendment. He's got to convince them that it's worth their voting. Some of them will just stay home. They're very evangelical about politics, they need to be inspired to vote. They don't think of themselves as partisans who have to beat the Democrat. The other crowd he has to get is radio. The medium of radio is very conservative, Rush Limbaugh being the star of it, but so many voices on radio just are tough, and I think he knows that if they continue to rant against him he will have a very hard time rallying the Republicans.

BONUS COVERAGE

Start honing your skills assembling those energy-saving fluorescent bulbs.

Hillary's Central Planning Committee has determined that you should be "ready for new green-collar jobs" in America.

View here.