The GOP can also split - into a proto-fascist rightist party representing outraged small businessmen, and a moderate conservative party, based on their traditional big business base.

Like the schizoid Democrats, who also have two identities - a corporate leadership and a populist base. America really has room for 3 parties, not 2, as the centrist Republicans and DLC Democrats are very close.

The 're-alignment' is already happening.

There is an overriding plan at play here. With a small hitch. The Ronald Reagan plan worked well. He cut taxes on his friends, steered government funding towards his benefactors, but ran up horrendous deficits. George H.W. Bush spent his presidency trying to cover for Reagan's blunders, and Bill Clinton spent his creating a surplus, defying all predictions about the ominous consequences of Reagan's deficit spending. George W. Bush simply followed Reagan's paradigm, running up even higher deficits which nobody could be expected to pay off. A Republican was not expected to win election this time, so John McCain became the sacrificial lamb, running a race that a Republican cannot win. When (and if) the Democrats win, they will be saddled with such horrible debt that they will be essentially powerless to enact any of their agenda, short of reducing the deficits. Process repeat. The Republicans will find an ideologue to carry their conservative banner in 2012 and 2016, recapturing the White House on a tax-cutting platform. It's foolproof. The only hitch is that credit crunch and Wall Street meltdown were planned to happen after the Democrats won this election so they could get the blame.

heck, the guy wants to run the free world... doesn't that include the RNC?

If he can't run his campaign with integrity behind his name branding, how could he be a decent president?

it's all so weird.

Anything less than a 5% victory will get tossed to the Supreme Court for them to declare a tie. And tie always goes to the Republican. It's the law.

Say it often. The GOP: the Party that Wrecked America.

The thing that really galls me is this 40-year drum-beat that conservatives are the True Americans.

They are not. They are TRAITORS to American ideals, and always have been. They are anti-American to their core, and have been for a very long time... at least since McCarthy, and even back to Hearst and the Spanish-American War. They're anti-American, and should be marginalized permanently.

As the lifeboats were to the Titanic's survivors, McCain needs the Republican Party and he will succumb to the same GOP mismanagement that we've seen under (or over) Bush.

Palin is window-dressing, nothing more, but McCain's age makes a Palin presidency possible.

Imagine a stupid Dick Cheney. That's Palin.

I verbalized my very first political opinion one breezy Autumn day outside my 3rd grade classroom when Nixon was running against Humphrey. It literally, just came flying out of my mouth to my own surprise from where, I'd no idea. But I knew I really meant it. If you'd have told me then, that in nearly a half a century later we would have a female VP from Alaska who spoke in tongues and who'd had her soul guarded from witchcraft, I would have told you to go easy on my best friend's older brother's hash bong.

Five years after that, I was attending Buckminster Fuller's City Center lectures on the perils of US oil-addiction, and how if we followed "Bucky's" "requiem" on solar and wind energy, we could actually be 50% energy-dependent by 1985, 100% by the millennium.

What the hell happened? The Conservatives. That's what. The irony of even their name, is astounding. By the time Ronald Regan was screaming "Tear Down That Wall," I was all but numb. What they wouldn't show us, was Regan screaming, "Tear down those solar panels off the White House roof!"

Life is supposed to progress, not regress; The contrary really feels a crime. Yet, that is what most of us baby-boomers have had to grin and bear witness to all of our adult lives, (With a slight gap of an OK Republican, Bill Clinton.)

Never mind the kids, Obama. It's no small thing to ignite new "hope" into these hardened old bones, who felt the last remaining rays ooze out of them watching Bobby Kennedy get shot, (the last of a chain of horrors.)

But this shipwreck? Now, THIS is a funeral I want front-row center to. This particular mutant, "Bill Frist", "Douglas Coe" evolution of "Conservatives Run-Riot" we've had to stomach for 10 years are JUST PLAIN EVIL.

And hey.

The higher you menacing pundits can get Pat Buchanan's comb-over to stick up in the air, the better.

... The Republican Party and the "modern conservative" movement will die anyway.

Let's face facts - If McCain wins, his administration is likely to be far worse than Bush's. He will likely start a war with Iran, further irritate our allies, and totally destroy whats left of the economy.

If McCain wins and dies in office... then Palin will be the final nail in the "conservative" coffin. She is nothing more than Bush in drag... an incompetent boob likely to screw up everything she lays hands on.

Let's hope that the American people don't get fooled again.

Get the hell out and vote... Lets throw the Republican party and the backwards morons that make up it's base an anchor.

Or maybe Reagan didn't believe his own propaganda that was for public consumption only.

The conservative movement is not dead and no one is jumping ship. We are trading captains.

Obama is the new conservative.

He has to pretend to be liberal to get votes.

Just like Clinton did.

There are two parties, both conservative, both pro-war, both pro-wall street, both pro-NAFTA and WTO and both against the American people and voters.

We are repainting the name of the ship from the "Titanic" to the "Gigantic" - never mind the icebergs, FULL SPEED AHEAD!

I for one, will welcome our Red Chinese Overlords unless Putin beats them to the prize.

Apart from my utter confusion about Mr. Kamiya's singing 'Ding-dong the witch is dead' a touch prematurely, I'd like to know why Salon (and every other news organization of conscience) isn't making America's dodgy voting machines a major story focus in the run-up D-Day.

Surely I speak for many millions when I ask: Who's in charge of those dangerous machines and the apparently buggy, riggable, hacker-friendly software that runs them? Can this equipment, these people be trusted? And if not, why is this potential crime of the century being neglected when it should be a headline news item?

I'd like to see a seriously in-depth story on that matter, asap.

Perhaps you could begin by asking Al Gore what he knows and thinks about state-of-the-art electronic democracy.