The Republicans ran our ship of state into an iceberg, so it's amusing for now to see then attempt to save themselves by rearranging the deck chairs.

But remember who did most of the dying on Titanic. The first class passengers got priority in the lifeboats.

I always wondered why it was that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Dubya never came up with a succession plan for what would happen after 8 years were up.

Well, duh.

If your only aim was "gimme what's mine" (AKA rape & pillage the U.S. economy), who cares who comes next?

Or, if you've already rigged the election process, so it doesn't make any difference how unappealing your ticket is.

This isn't about "ideology," it's about stealing from the American people. Don't let them contnue to get away with it. Vote, folks!

I'm not counting my chickens yet, but the prospect of the demise of the neo-cons is certainly the silver lining to the dark cloud of the economic collapse they enabled. Hell- aggressively abetted.

The neo-con ascendancy was based on a marriage of convenience between the American Taliban and the people their own god 86ed from the temple backed in the day. As long as the money rolled in god's warriors were happy, and as long as fundies delivered the votes and allowed the greedheads to plunder at will the latter were perfectly willing to let the religoius nuts have their nasty little culture war. But like all marriages of convenience the irreconcilable differences emerge when circumstances render things inconvenient. And the divorce is, as divorces tend to be, ugly. Ever since the 2004 election it has been obvious that the only thing that would destroy this unholy alliance is an economic meltdown.

Things will get worse before they get better, no matter who becomes president. But who knows- maybe the plutocrats will get taken down a few notches along with the rest of us, we might get a more compassionate and less intolerant Christianity, and a sane, secular and practical conservativism can rise out of the ashes of Rovian beast the GOP became under the banner of neo-conservatism.

"-- the right-wing intelligentsia is still reciting its worn-out ideological mantras, claiming that an Obama victory would mean the death of "freedom," the triumph of socialistic "big government" and abject surrender to our enemies."

Yes ---- FREEDOM! That's what conservatism is all about. FREEDOM!!!!!

And we all know what the most important freedom is...

FREEDOM FROM ORAL SEX!!!!!!!!!

Not only is this the most predictable course for what's left of the Party, but it is also the most expedient for the necessary self-immolation of the Party and the earlier achievment of a sane society.

The neocon facist looners have control of the rudder and will spin the ship into its own whirlpool, creating a long-awaited Perfect Storm. This won't be pretty and it won't be sane, but we've lived with this insanity for at least the past 28 years, and particularly the past 14. The elephant cannot be tranquilized: it must be shot between the eyes. A do-it-yourself project is underway. We must help it along as best we can.

It's no longer difficult for me to say this, let alone think it. Like Chris Buckley, I have no idea what "they" are trying to accomplish, what star they are using to navigate. It is, apparently, one the rest of us (we old-school, small "c" conservatives who cling to memories of Dwight Eisenhower and the evolved Barry Goldwater) cannot see because it really isn't out there.

Kamiya is right. While Bush and, to a lesser extent, McCain and Palin, is/are problematic, they are not the underlying cause of the disembowelment of the Grand Old Party. It's been the followers, the Good Germans of the movement, those legions of parrots ("dittoheads"? Yeah, that too) who have carried the sick message way beyond what anyone had anticipated could have happened. This is why the current crop of so-called operatives are all now calling for the head of Dubya. They always go for the head. Unfortunately, the premise that removal of the head will take out the brain has long since been proven a non-starter in this case, as Bush, although his genes come from a poisoned well, didn't do this all on his own. He is a blind eye sitting at the bottom of the inverted Republican pyramid. That eye will be crushed beneath the weight of its own hubris and ignorance.

This party must be allowed to destroy itself as quickly as possible in order to rebuild or perhaps create a wholly new alternative, call it what you will. There is a whole generation of what the late Soviets used to call "dead souls" out there in Republican drag, and they need to move on to the Elephant's Burial Ground, now.

It is with the greatest pleasure and relief that I see this happening coincident with the greatest Democratic triumph in memory.

There will be no relent from inside the tent, so I certainly pray the bunch of you who call yourselves Democratic Americans will not relent from the outside, until this battle for the soul of the Right is finally won on November 4. The corpus is already rotting. Perversely, only a Democratic sweep can save the soul.

Let us together now finish this job.

To this superb analysis, I can only offer my view that conservative media have ruined their child, the Republican Party, by unconditionally supporting it, shifting blame to the Dems, and denying world realities thereby keeping Republicans dangerously content with the status quo, a luxury that Democrats have been denied - and a good thing. For all their faults, liberals at least are able to admit mistakes like busing and demonizing Vietnam soldiers. (Interestingly, the spitting incident never happened except in reverse. According to contemporaneous media reports, it was a Vietnam vet who spit on an anti-war protesters. No biggie, but notice how desperate conservatives are to play the victim, which they never did prior to being babied by today's conservative media)

Like Americans have always prided themselves, Republicans formerly tolerated dissent, but no more, to judge from the pariahs they've lately made of Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker and Colin Powell, to cite but a few hapless conservatives. Dems still can't decide whether to reject Lieberman. Imagine if like Joe, Buckley or Powell had excoriated Republicans in a speech at the Democratic convention!