IMHO, Carter made one big mistake, and it cost him the 1980 election.

After being deposed, the former shah of Iran wanted to come to the USA, allegedly for medical treatment. Henry Kissinger advised Carter that the shah should be allowed into the USA, and Carter made the mistake of taking that advice.

That action so incensed the Iranian radicals that they invaded our embassy, took hostages and created a standoff that lasted 444 days. It was clearly done to humiliate and punish Carter for not disowning the shah.

It's merely wounded.

Its wealthy benefactors have erected a massive think-tank/media distribution infrastructure over the past sixty years that they will be able to continue to fund and operate. The rabid core group has the discipline to wander the desert for decades if necessary while plotting their return. They are very comfortable in opposition-party-mode (actually more comfortable!), in which they can engage even more incendiary, even nastier bomb-throwing.

Be not complacent. The age-old warning about the danger of wounded animals might seem to be a cliche, but it's also true,

The GOP should take a long, hard look at President Eisenhower and see what made it possible to be a Republican president in an era of Democratic predominance. They should try to conserve a few things, change as little as possible, manage the government efficiently with cost-cutting in mind, have a cautious foreign policy which stresses alliances, diplomacy, and the occasional dirty trick over massive armed intervention, and make sure tax income matches federal outlays (remember, it was Ike who slashed the military budget after Korea), enforce the laws, and play nice. This might not make the base happy, but if would get them in the White House and keep them in the White House, because it's the kind of center/right policies that, if Peggy N. had a brain, she'd understand that Americans do want.

I am a political junkie. An avowed liberal, I was a political science major in college, and throughout my life have enjoyed few things more than solid, intellectual political discourse on any number of topics. Sadly, I have frequently been disappointed by the level of political discourse available during the more right-wing periods of history we have all been forced to endure.

Without a doubt, Gary Kamiya's pieces, "The Republican Shipwreck", and "The Coulterization of the American Right" (referenced in the former), are two of the finest examples of writing in this genre I have ever read. The fact that the latter article was published on March 13, 2007, is simply amazing, as it could easily serve as the definitive postmortem on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Even as a liberal, I join in mourning the purer, more noble, infinitely more intellectual, Republican opposition which once existed in this world. It may be frightening - but is not all that challenging - to campaign against the anti-intellectual, xenophobic, fact-challenged 'just plain folks' posers who are the face of today's Republican Party. A party that long ago celebrated intellect, excellence and ideas has degenerated into a mudslinging, atavistic, lowest-common-denominator mob celebrating mediocrity and proudly deriding both educational achievement and any sort of mature, reality-based approach to foreign relations.

I am like several other ones I will wait until Obama has won the actual election to revel! There is still to much ignorance in this country. Most intelligent people should be running like h... from John McCain due to his policies that are a exactly the same as Bush's. That will in the end destroy what's left of this country if they aren't changed. It will be a black day in this country if McCain/Palin actually win. Something close to the day when the Supreme Court gave George W Bush the election of 2000. Most of us knew we were in for a nightmare then. But, it does make me feel good to watch all the rats deserting the ship. To watch the 'hate machine' starting to implode on itself. They are starting to get as frightened as the rest of us have been for 8 years now. We couldn't get so lucky as the Republican ship actually wreck! We be done with the terrible blight on our country known as conservatism! And relegate the mess to the history books.

Though I have been a liberal since forever and am prone to think the misfortunes of the right as "God's justice," I really don't think the triumphalism of this piece is qualitatively different than similar musings written at the other end of the spectrum 8 and 4 years ago.

And there is the usual mistake of relinquishing any claims on the left to "tradition, patriotism, morality, family values, community, God" to embrace the "relativist, secular, progressive, scientific." These are not mutually exclusive value-sets.

An Ombama victory is the beginning of an opportunity that will have its day and pass in time. The only wisdom we can hope to aquire," wrote Eliot, " is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless.

The Arthritic Hand of the Republican Party

Imagine an arthritic hand emerging from cuffs of silk, dotted with liver spots, lumped and misshapen at the thumbs and knuckles. The Hand of the Republican party is such a hand, holding on but slipping, losing its grip on the levers of power.

Yes ‘we the people’ imagine this hand and take note. Captains of the Bush nightmare are retreating and even their gold cuff links will not be enough. It does not matter the senile mind that rules this hand is screaming, shouting out last gasps of anything it can come up with to stave off the inevitable flood of new ideas which are about to glove it and cuff it to the problems of the past.

Yes, the Republicans will use what ever slander possible. But their slanders are slanders of the past. Socialism, Communism, Class Warfare. These have been shouted before, seventy, eighty, ninety years ago, and this time they will not work. They did not work with FDR either.

The Republicans could put a metaphoric Barcelona Anarchists hat on Obama’s head, and even this would fail.

Hurrah for the future and we hope a new direction for America, hurrah if the Republican party finds itself beheaded like Louis or Marie Antoinette. And just by comparison; Tricky Dick was more a Socialist than is Barack Obama... Tricky Dick was for national health care, and he instituted Wage and Price controls.

Take that Sarah Palin.. You uneducated idiot.—Go eat some moose!! And John McCain... What a sad and tragic way to end a life.

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