I think there’s one factor you may have overlooked: Fox News. Sure, there are a number of the sensationalist elements missing this time around, but there is one aspect of the story that will make it essential watching for the Fox audience. To wit, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – that makes the Republican base go as wild with excitement as any story that allows them express their inveterate nigger-hatred without being held accountable for their underlying racism. Thus, it’s virtually impossible to pull up any random site in the Republican blogosphere without a prominent picture of Don Imus, suddenly the greatest martyr to the far Right since Whittaker Chambers. Likewise, the virtual mass hysteria among the Republican base over Mike Nifong and the Duke stripper case, which – for some utterly mysterious reason – seems to be the single case of egregious prosecutorial misconduct the Right has ever detected in the history of U.S. jurisprudence. And, of course, no discussion of the Duke prosecution is ever complete without demands that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson personally answer for Nifong’s misconduct, just as they are called upon to do in any case in which any African-Americans appear in a compromising position. Finally – in a slight variation on the theme – I recall no issue in my lifetime that has elicited the same level of seething outrage and indignation among the Republican base as the prospect of anything but an “enforcement only” approach to illegal immigration, or the suggestion that the federal government play any role other than that of wetback-hunting lynch mob.

Yup; all in all, I’d say the new O.J. case might prove to have some legs after all.

Blumenthal’s analysis of Bush’s character as rooted in the assorted intricacies of psychological insecurity, class distinction and family dynamics is deeply insightful, but I think the matter ultimately may be understood somewhat more simply. Bush is – as is widely recognized – a common bully and a grunting baboon, and decent people quite literally wouldn’t allow him in their homes to clean their toilets, much less sit at their dinner table. Simply put, civilized human beings don’t drop their pants and shit in the living room, they don’t brag about having sex with goats, and they sure as hell don’t admire George Bush.

Geoffrey Wawro, a professor of military history at the University of North Texas in Denton, says . . . . "This is a very Republican place, and people support the war because they support their president, and vice versa."

Ahhh, yes, I see; just the way, for example, they supported “their president” Bill Clinton, right? Because we all know that such patriots treat the office of the presidency with great deference and respect, regardless of political party or specific policies. Which means, of course, that none of these patriotic Americans belonged to the “Slick Willie” crowd, or accused Bill Clinton of raping Paula Jones and murdering Vince Foster, or called Hillary Clinton a dyke and a feminazi, or wallowed in the dozens of other depraved, crotch-sniffing conspiracy theories surrounding the last Democratic President and his wife. And, of course, their support for Bush is in no way contingent on his support of the most extreme positions of the Republican right, or his demonization of liberals as traitors and cowards and fags.

As to the accusations of stereotyping, of course Texas isn’t monolithic – politically, culturally, or ethnically – and there are broad exceptions to the standard red-state, Bush-supporting portion of the Texas electorate. Nor is the rest of the country free from the responsibility for the grotesque phenomenon of Republicanism; as Citizen X and New Deal Democrat astutely point out, the single politician in the entire United States that could conceivably match George Bush for sheer personal loathsomeness, Nosferatu Guiliani, hails from right here in New York City. But I think the objections to such stereotyping are misplaced, as I suspect such collective judgments are a kind of shorthand, and are directed solely at the Republican base – at their bigotry and authoritarianism and religious fanaticism – rather than at Texas voters as a whole. Moreover, it seems fair to point out that the above-referenced exceptions to the state’s Bush-supporting Republican base are just that: Exceptions, and relatively small ones at that.

As others have correctly pointed out, there’s no chance in hell that Bush supporters will ever put aside their fanaticism to vote for a Democrat, no matter how brutal, corrupt, dishonest and just goddamn wrong the Republicans have been. But what that observation fails to take into account is that while such supporters will never vote for a Democrat, lots of them have become so disillusioned and angry that they are likely to stay home in droves on election day, delivering any number of otherwise close races to the Democratic Party.

And that is exactly where payback comes in. For years – no decades – the Republican base has indulged what they deem to be their God-given right to express their hatred and sneering contempt for liberals, gays, feminists, blacks and Mexicans, and now, as Malcolm X once noted, the chickens are coming home to roost. Let me make it as clear as humanly possible: More than anything – anything – I will have nothing whatever to do with any candidate or party that seeks to “transcend partisan politics,” “put our differences behind us,” “come together as a country,” or any other such bullshit. What I do care about is pursuing a strategy of ridiculing Bush as a stupid, petulant, arrogant, lying ape, and excoriating the Republican base that supports him as the cause of everything that is deformed and malevolent about our political system.