I preferred Lincoln Chaffee's "cocky whacko," myself. But there's still something reassuring about the fact that they do understand their own mess, even if they got themselves into it. The Corner's self-delusions are much more depressing.

Sen. Obama, free of charge:

"How are they going to bring the nation together when they can't even bring their own ticket together?"

Oh bravo, very satisfying - where was this "advisor" when it came to vetting this whack job? Her whack-a-doodleness seems like it was pretty common knowledge in Alaska.  

(Sigh) everyone in Obama land is so damned mature, capable and civilized, I'll miss this sort of thing.  

I particularly liked this quote about Palin from Republican Senator (and longtime McCain friend) Chuck Hagel of Nebraska:

"She knows her audience, and she's going right after them. And I'll tell you why that's dangerous. It's dangerous because you don't want to define down the standards in any institution, ever, in life. You want to always strive to define standards up. If you start defining standards down--'Well, I don't have a big education, I don't have experience'--yes, there's a point to be made that not all the smartest people come out of Yale or Harvard. But to intentionally define down in some kind of wild populism, that those things don't count in a complicated, dangerous world--that's dangerous in itself."

Agreed, epic - is this the future of conservatism? If so, I hope stands astride it, Buckley-style, and shouts, "Stop!"

BHL - that is a good quote. Hadn't heard it. Thanks!

From The Telegraph: [Jim Nuzzo] told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"

So, from the days of Richard Viguerie laying the foundation that drew enough of America's center to the conservative cause to give them power, the far right, after getting so used to power that it felt no qualms about handing over power to the current team, has drunken in enough hubris to believe their best course of action is anti-recruiting. To undo not only all the work of Viguerie but all of his successors as well. Now the only debate about conservatism for the Rabid Right is who is best conservative, the most conservative, the purest conservative. Ideas have degenerated into buzzwords, ideology into mere loyalty, competent leaders are replaced by pals, and the rhetoric has shifted from suasion to hectoring.

These are the signs of how power corrupts -- it makes us believe our own PR.

All this time the Rabid Right were really a minority of Americans. They kept repeating the mantra that they represented a “real” America so often that they came to believe it too fervently. They for got this is still a democracy. They still have to persuade people all over America to vote for them. In all her time on the public platform, I have never heard one word from Sarah Palin inviting me to join her movement. Her talk is all about excluding me and denigrating me and people like me. Do you think you can gain power in a country 80% urban by telling the country only small town people are real Americans?

The Rabid Right were formed and defined by the culture wars of sixties. And now their time is done. The Radical Right Rump is now busy slashing what remains of their movement down to nothing. Their civil war of “excommunication” (!) seems to have no purpose other than a concerted effort to become a small, angry, noisy but irrelevant scrap on the American political scene. No ideas. No following. Nothing but the bitter taste of lost power to fuel their hatred. The rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter will be as relevant in the 2020’s as Abby Hoffman was to the nineties or King George III was to the Civil War.

OK, I do get a little carried away. But there’s no denying, the times, they are a-changin’. Rush, you better get swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone.

To be fair, back in the day Lymon touted Palin and not too many of us got riled up about her. I am not quite sure how they could have vetted her, how could they know she would perform so badly in interviews, or come across so crassly to so many people. If she had the competence of any one of a number of other Repub. women this might be a very different situation now. McCain let himself be railroaded by choosing her because he is ultimately driven by nothing so much as his own ambition.

I disagree with Wandrey, I can't wait until this is over. I watched Fox this morning, first they pulled up a TIPP poll that showed Obama up by 4%, mentioned the 3% margin of error, and then proceeded to talk how the race was a dead heat for 10 minutes, then they showed the Palin-McCain speeches up until I left for work. The 24 hour Fox McCain-Palin channel of free media. Luckily the people who watch it long ago made up their minds. I watched it because once in a while I like to see what the whack jobs are saying.

Here's the Telegraph link:

www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Republican-fears-of-historic-Obama-landslide-unleash-civil-war-for-the-future-of-the-party.html

blackton, unless you are doing penance for some truly unspeakable offense (running down a bevy of nuns while fleeing the scene of a drug heist on your way to clubbing some baby seals, mayhap?), why on EARTH are you watching Fox News?  Are you trying to induce vomiting?

drdannyu, I really watch it so see just how outrageously they are for the GOP and how against they are Obama. It is almost laughable if it weren't akin to violating every journalistic standard there is. They played up that whack job in Florida's question about Obama being a Marxist as being a "tough, fair question" that the Obama camp can't handle.

Honestly, it makes me wonder if these people are not in fact borderline insane. Maybe they really want Obama to win and are acting so over the top nutso to drive every sane American to Obama.

If the Dems really do get broad and deep control of the legislative and executive, they should declare a Fox News boycott. Let the guys who were the only ones who had access to Cheney and his cohort spend several years in the access wilderness with nothing to report but conspiracy theories and doing interviews with the Pissed Off Formerly Powerful.

Robert Earl Keen has a great ballad, "Gringo Honeymoon," in which a newlywed in Mexico meets a string of strangers, including a "cowboy who said that he / was running from the DEA" who takes the couple to a bar where they hear a "crusty caballero" who "sang like Marty Robbins could / played like no one I know."

www.youtube.com/watch

I've always assumed that blackton is the cowboy fugitive, and williamyard is the crusty caballero. Which I say by way of offering an explanation for why blackton would watch Fox News. I've been an expat myself, and sometimes the need to connect with a little American news is more powerful than the wish to avoid any particular toxic media.

Insane?  Perhaps.  Other possible applicable adjectives: stupid, venal, racist, reactionary, solipsistic, amoral, and whatever term accurately describes sticking one's fingers in one's ears and going "La, la, la... I can't HEEEEEEEEEEEAR YOUUUUUUUUUU!!" really loudly.  Or some combination thereof.

I liked watching Fox from time to time to see what's going on in the other neck of the woods, and it is quite different. Like it or not, it's a popular network (though I believe it's slipping in the ratings) and a lot of people pay attention. Plus, I'm all for Obama but the constant fanfare on MSNBC gets a little tiring, I like to have some cold water thrown on me from time to time.

As for vetting Palin, she looked great on paper. I liked her for about 2 seconds, before she opened her mouth. I suspect a few in-depth conversations might have clued McCain & his campaign onto the fact that she was poison. She lost me with that convention speech that the media bent over backwards trying to acclaim. All partisan, all sarcastic, nothing to appeal to independents. And then, of course, the interviews. And the debate which the media also bent over backwards to acclaim. That was the greatest turning point for me, when I realized she was a complete disaster. But she's politically clever and could be a threat in the future.

Rhubarbs-

Nice pull with the Robert Earl Keen reference! Myself, I would go with a quote from Leveland, "Flatter than a tabletop, makes you wonder why they stopped here; Wagon must of broke a wheel, or they lacked ambition one". It reminds me of a quote from my dad, himself an Okie that left his smalltown and never looked back, "Oklahoma's best export is its people. The one's that stay in small town Oklahoma are the one that aren't worth a damn".

With that in mind, I am worried that Palin is a communist. Look at the way she goes after those 'elitist liberals'. Replace 'elitist liberals' with 'running dogs', and add the sentimental view that 'real Americans' are uneducated and backwards small town folk (ignorance as a virtue) that can run things better, and she will find herself comfortable with Mao's cultural revolution. Maybe she can start relocating the intelligentsia out to the heartland to learn to work with their hands as rehabilitation. They would have to do do without Starbucks and sushi, but on the upside they can learn about how much meth is cooked and used in solid-values small towns. And Joe the plumber, Mary the waitress, and Phil the concrete guy can run the government.

I love "Levelland," though I'm pretty sure it's originally a James McMurtry composition:

www.youtube.com/watch

But that's brilliant: When you change the nouns, Palin's rhetoric really does have a certain Maoist, even Khmer Rouge, slant. Empty the cities! Kill all the professors! Hadn't noticed that before, but I do admit I'm a sucker for a sharp brunette with glasses and a northern accent.

Rhubarbs-

You are correct, McMurtry wrote Levelland, though it will always be a REK song to me! Talk about truth in advertising, have you ever been out there?

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm enjoying the heck out of the circular firing squad that's being formed and that is so richly deserved by these people who have done so much damage these last eight years.