Second, she supported Romney as more conservative than McCain last time, and whether she's right or wrong about Romney, there's consistency there.
Third, Texans, Southerners, evangelicals tend to get a pass if they aren't ideologically 100%. Certainly Bush did. Ann, who helped write the pass for Bush may wonder why people from her part of the country like Romney and Christie don't get a similar pass. She's trying to write out such a pass. This angers people who aren't from Ann's part of the country. That's natural, but I wonder why more of the discussion hasn't touched on this point.
Maybe part of the problem is that Ann doesn't express her support for Mitt in terms of his likelihood of winning, but in terms of his being the "true conservative," and this rankles people who don't agree. But that's how Ann conceptualizes or categorizes everything. When you paint everything as a conflict between adherence to the true ideology and betraying it, you're going to do that even if you are wrong.
If you didn't buy it when she told you that owning an SUV was a natural right that true conservatives would fight for, you may have seen through her way of painting all disputes as involving orthodoxy and heresy, but if you went along with her then, you're probably angry at her now, and painting her as the heretic/renegade/apostate.
Sometimes, though, other concerns play a role. The "natural right" to a gas guzzler may be limited by questions of gas efficiency or scarcity or pollution. Questions of electability may affect the candidates we nominate as much as ideological concerns.
Questions of electability may affect the candidates we nominate as much as ideological concerns.
It can’t be ELECTABILITY...
Romney’s negative ratings soaring among independents