...the end of a beautiful (OK, an unspeakably ugly) movement. I think what many people are missing is the sudden demise of the formerly invulnerable GOP electoral monster. Since 1994 and the Repugnant Revolution, the party has been masterful at winning elections through divisive, hateful, dirty ugly tactics: race baiting, whisper campaigns, rumor and innuendo, sowing fear of terrorism, questioning an opponent's patriotism, etc. God, guns and gays, baby.

Of course, during this time it became very clear that what the GOP was not good at was governing, because they didn't care about good governance. They cared about power: getting it wielding, it abusing it, and perpetuating it. From trying to bring down Clinton over a White House blowjob (a transgression that seems antiquely quaint now) to approving torture and the Iraq war, the Republicans didn't give a ripe shit about lost jobs or poisoned resources or the poor, only about their power and the constituency that help them stay in power, the big energy and war corporations. Bush was a good electoral pony; people wanted to crack a brewski with him, so what if he couldn't tell the Constitution from a roll of Charmin. Same for most of their other candidates; if they could smear, suck up to lobbyists and keep their gay/straight affairs quiet while fucking over the little guy, they'd get party dollars and all the whores they could eat.

The seismic shift that's happening now is that THAT MACHINE IS BROKEN. The tricks no longer appear to work. Obama. The Senate. The House in 2006. The wheels have fallen off the bus and the members of the GOP soccer team are eating each other. Something or multiple somethings woke Americans up. I think (and this is just my theory), they were:

1) Terry Schiavo. When Congress tried to step in and interfere with this family's private grief, and when Hastert said he could diagnose her via videotape, I think that's when people started muttering, "Damn, these people are overstepping their bounds." It was clear that the GOP leaders wanted to control our personal lives and morality. That ugly scene set the stage for...

2) Katrina. This was as ugly as it gets. Iraq was and is HUGE, but it's 8,000 miles away. Katrina was in our backyard and the government dropped the ball in an indifferent, grinning, teenager-caught-jacking-off-by-his-folks-with-his-dick-in-his-hand kind of way. I think many millions of Americans turned against the GOP then and there, because the picture was all too clear: caring about the private affairs of a dying woman who's none of your damned business for purely political reasons, check; caring about hundreds of thousands of people in peril who happen to mostly be black and democratic, um, no thanks.

3) Abramoff. I know many will insist that people didn't follow the Abramoff scandals, but I disagree. I know a lot of people who were not political animals who did follow it, and even if they didn't get the details, they got the general picture: Republicans corrupt as hell. The final nail in the coffin was...

4) The 2006 election and "Macaca." The offhand pejorative label applied by George Allen to a South Asian attendee to one of his campaign events underscored for many people the ugliness and racism of the GOP base and ended up costing him his seat, quite unexpectedly, to the awesome Jim Webb.

These events (and others) built and built on another until with this campaign we've seen the bumbling McCain team trying the usual raft of filth and none of it working other than with the fucktard base, who would vote for a turd sandwich if it wore a flag lapel pin and promised to overturn Roe v. Wade. The old game is done but the GOP doesn't know it. They don't know what to do, because as usual, they're 20 years behind. I think we're seeing a paradigm shift, and future Republican candidates will have to have actual ideas, principles and character if they hope to take down the Democratic majority that's about to hatch on Nov. 4.

Now if we can just purge Congress of about 100 of the most craven, corrupt Dems, we'll really have something.

Thanks for the kudos. I'm 100% down with the suspicions that little will change with the GOP; I agree with the fears that an Obama administration will be targeted for every possible obstruction and charge that the right can muster. I also don't delude myself that having the Democrats back in charge of the store is any sort of panacea. God knows they've done jack since regaining control of Congress two years ago.

My optimism is predicated on two factors. One, the old tactics may still be the GOP's only bullet, but the majority of Americans don't appear to be buying them anymore, at least not right now. Two, I look back at the 8 Clinton years and think, "Yeah, I'd accept, in the near term, a repeat of that: stability in the world, a booming economy and a budget surplus, as long as we could throw in universal healthcare, a sane Middle East policy and a national alternative energy/climate change project."

As for the economy and its effect on the election, it's a great hypothetical. I think, based on public reaction to the smears and the ridiculous Palin selection, that Obama would still be leading if the economy was in the shaky-but-sort-of-OK shape it was in last spring, but the race would be 1-2 points and we'd all be nervous wrecks. I think the negative effect the McCain dirt campaign has had on his numbers shows a fundamental shift in voter attitudes and tolerance for that sort of thing, though it could be a "We're losing our savings, why are you yammering about Bill Ayers?" sort of thing.