I'm hoping they all decide to back McCain and he still loses. I'd love to see the repugnant Republicans fracture and splinter and have the party go away. Other parties will take its place and perhaps a new liberal party can rise at the same time.

In 1980 I was young and foolish, and I said young and foolish things. Among the things I said was "If Reagan is elected, it will be such a disaster that the Democrats will return to power in 1984." This was the sort of ideological stupidity -- in grad school, informed by Marxist dialectics -- that drives true believers to claim that things have to get worse to get better. I am just tickled that the ideologues of the Far Right are now seizing upon that historically fallacious idea. Sometimes, when things get "worse," they continue to get "worse." I'm glad that the Republicans are about to learn that lesson -- I hope it takes them as long to learn it as it did the Democrats.

The link you've provided to Ann Coulter's piece is broken. Her site is at http://www.anncoulter.com/ - the article is on the front page with no direct link.

when you need him?

There's a very good reason the most fervent right-wing hate groups are rooting for Clinton: it will make them money.

Think about how many listeners someone like Limbaugh will gain from a Clinton presidency. Think about how many talk-shows Coulter will get on.

They are true Republicans in that they are giddy at the thought of sacrificing what they think is best for the country in order to make some cash.

Someone is really going to have to kiss the ass of Mister Oxycontin-Addict-Three-Times-Divorced-Ducked-Viet-Nam to get him to support McCain.

And the 3 Stooges too--Coulter, Malkin, and Ingraham.

I'm amused by this...

"They won the future by losing the present, and by refusing to give in to the more moderate members of their party.... will we be saving the party for the grand old cause?"

As ever, the GOP takes the opposite tack of the Democrats. The GOP would sacrifice their moderates and distill themselves to their hard and hateful little core, the Goldwater Formula from '64 that has done so much to shape American politics, unfortunately. The Democrats, when faced with Republican victory after victory, sacrificed their progressives and dilute themselves to a watery, pale blue weak tea, which has also done so much to shape American politics, unfortunately.

Distillation versus dilution -- one worked for awhile, and the other failed for a very long time. How should the Democrats respond to Republican weakness in the moment? Should they dilute themselves further, make themselves even weaker, or distill themselves into something harder and more coherent? Time to tack leftward, not rightward, go on offense, not defense.

Coulter conceives of only McCain v. Clinton, won't even bring up Obama. That's revealing. That's because Obama beats McCain, and creates a new dynamic that the GOP can't dent for generations. Or maybe she was just being pragmatic, figuring Clintonian clout would win the nomination.

The one thing that the right has been able to do, that the left, has not, is unite. Ambivelance about Kerry (And to a lesser extent, Gore) in certain circles scuttled his election. The right, largely through the efforts of a few key people (Norquist comes to mind immediately) were able to persuade their various factions that they could all get what they wanted if they stayed united. The right is practical. Liberals tend to be more idealistic. Thus our inability to unite, and thus all the vitriol that gets spilled across these posts at Salon.

In the end, the right is falling apart. The immoral minority is relatively unsatisfied by what Bush has accomplished for them, fiscal conservatives are generally appalled by...everything Bush has done.

Bush is to the left what Coulter thinks McCain will be to the right. I doubt it. Kids are getting more and more progressive, and are voting more and more.

Now that we are looking at a fractured republican party, the question is, can the Democrats unite?

Is the almost fervent hate Republicans have, not for Democratic Leaders, but for Dems as a whole. I find the NY Post editorial boards "conciliation" rhetoric striking.

"He may be just what is needed to attract the independents needed to keep the Democrats out of the White House -- and the true believers at CPAC would do well to keep that in mind"

It is striking because of how devoid of policy arguments it is. The only goal is to keep Dems from the White House, to win. They don't want to win over any Dems at all, they want to rule with 51%. They've learned nothing from the last 8 years.

From what I can tell, the main reason conservatives don't like McCain is because his not as rabidly and blindly partisan as they are. He supports the war. He supports their economic world view. He just doesn't HATE the enemy enough. And the real enemy isn't terrorists or immigrants (though they are sometimes enemy), the enemy is liberals. McCain in the past has been unwilling to blindly hate Dems and to blindly support the president and nothing makes them angrier. Outside of immigration, I haven't heard one policy complaint from Repugs about McCain. He is not "conservative" enough, we're told, without anyone ever defining conservatism. Its like the term conservative or liberal have no substantive meaning behind them anymore, they are white collar gangs. CPAC must be a sad, sad place to be.

It would be better for everybody if Obama or Clinton wins.

What should also augur in favor of boldness on the part of the Dems, versus Reidian and/or DLC timidity, is that the GOP truly is on the wrong side of every issue that matters to Americans. They've been able to ramrod their agenda through by virtue of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown by way of 9/11, and through sheer party discipline and ruthless realpolitik machinations, but they're far, far to the right of the majority of Americans on every issue. Americans want good schools, clean environment, alternative energy, repaired infrastructure, and so on, and are willing to pay taxes for these things, because that's what grown-ups do: you pay for things you want to fix. All the GOP offers is more tax cuts for the wealthy and more war. That's it. Oh, and theocracy, too. What a swell platform! Neither Obama nor Clinton would risk anything by moving further to the left -- they should be bolder, because the more the GOP carps rabidly about issues Americans care about, the lamer they look.