I recently posted how McCain/Palin rallys had recently become something of a throwback to the civil rights rallies of the 60’s.  No, not those rallies.  The ones that didn’t get broadcast.  The ones held at night, in the woods, with torches and shit.

It looks like the tide has finally turned, and with it comes the final nail in McCain’s coffin.  Really, this is the 10-second ad that completely obliterates their latest argument…you don’t know Barack Obama.

Somebody just tossed this together.  As I think it completely encapsulates the end of this race, it goes first. 

Yes…he is talking about Barack.  You can see the longer question and answer on YouTube.  And yes, he does get booed for this.

This was needed because, as I mentioned previously, his attack line that “Barack Obama is an America-Hating Terrorist” was finding fertile ground amoung his supporters.

Please note…

These are not the type of people that McCain wants to represent him.  Palin…were not so sure.  So far she hasn’t done anything to disavow her scuriolous attacks.  

This is leading some realize that her behaviour is exactly the big problem with the Republican party.  And I, strangely, find myself agreeing with David Brooks.   In this essay, he is gently pointing out that having stupid people run things because you hate government is not a sound political philosophy.

This year could have changed things. The G.O.P. had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Rudy Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking “eastern elites.” (Mitt Romney!) John McCain picked Sarah Palin.

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin. Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the “normal Joe Sixpack American” and the coastal elite.

She is another step in the Republican change of personality. Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch.

[full story] [edited so I could still agree with it.  An averagely brain-blessed woman can appear intelligent if she is hot.  Until she starts talking a bunch.  Then you realize she is average in the brain and genius in the body.  This is also true for men.]

The thing about it is, when you hate government and run on that platform relentlessly, you end up only having supporters that can’t see the inherent illogic your very party represents.   Which is to say, dumb ones.  When a big part of your platform is hating smart people, and everyone who runs your party is actually pretty smart in real life, the disconnect is so severe that you get…well…you get a country run into the freaking ground.  That’s what happens.

And you do it to cheering, blaming the other “team”.

And because you have shit on everyone who ever rubbed two neurons together in the race to the bottom, now your party is in shambles, as it would have been in late 2004 *if these very same tactics hadn’t worked*.

Success can hide many faults, but when you use that success to pat yourself on the back, rather than fix your problems, failure becomes catostrophic.  Now you have not only the faults that were ignored to deal with, but they are now multiplied by the very real faults any working piece of machinery develops over the years.

A political party is much like an engine, and when you think that winning one race means you don’t need to change the oil (hey, it worked last time!),  you can’t be surprised when that engine explodes in your face during the next.