Since the Republican right is seemingly incapable of looking forward and only looks backward, meaning backwards to America's most cruel political and economic past, it is interesting to examine the antecedents of the current robo calls being made in important battleground states by the forces of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Richard Nixon made his first foray into national politics after being discharged from the Navy after answering an ad placed by a committee of right wing professionals seeking a candidate to run for the seat of 10-year veteran Congressman Jerry Voorhis.

Nixon was intrigued.  The district included Nixon's hometown of Whittier.  The young lawyer demonstrated himself to be politically active as he ran successfully for student body president at Whittier College.  

He would also prove adaptable at serving the needs of his professional benefactors, as was later exemplified by the secret fund established by them for his personal use after he was elected.  

This gave rise to the teary-eyed Checkers Speech when he denounced that he was not giving up the Cocker Spaniel that his daughters had been given by a citizen admirer, hardly on point, but then again when the facts are clearly against you, what do you do if you are Nixon?

Some observers of the current presidential campaign have expressed surprise and asked why so many forces of hate have shouted angry epithets of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at emotionally tinged Sarah Palin rallies.

The real question to ask is "Why would these hateful elements not be there?"

Republican operatives realize that there is a far right, kook element of their party that they make fun of in private, with such documentation currently existing, but pander to in the saddest, most debasing way at political crunch time.

If in place of Palin a Candidate X were to address Republican rallies arguing strongly for a different economic plan to bring the U.S. economy out of its doldrums this would call for thinking rather than vicious shouts.  Appeal to the narrowest base of the party and the fringe element angrily converges.

A key rule in presidential political analysis involves just which states candidates are vying for in the crucial period coming down to the wire.

During the 1988 campaign Republican operatives delighted in noting the shrinking Democratic state effort, which they ultimately belittled as the Dukakis "18 state strategy" when resources were gradually pulled from states that the party had original designs of winning.  

When offices were closed in Florida and resources transferred elsewhere it became increasingly apparent that what was being sought was elimination of a blowout that could cost the entire party maximal damage at all levels.

While Barack Obama is correct in asserting that the effort needs to be continued aggressively and nothing can be taken for granted, it is confidence enhancing for Democrats to see that now the Republicans are in the position of becoming a dangerously marginalized and sharply diminished party.  

John McCain has always been known for a low boiling point.  After he received the Republican presidential nomination speculation mounted over whether, at a strategically vital point in the campaign, he would erupt.

Here was the man who was so volatile that, according to Michael Dukakis, he and equally soft spoken Tommy Thompson were rudely "thrown out of the office" of McCain by the  Arizona senator himself because he opposed the Amtrak train project that they were promoting.

McCain was bipartisan in that instance but not very wise, taking such rude action against the Democratic governor of Massachusetts and Republican governor of Wisconsin, two important states from the eastern seaboard and Midwest respectively.

McCain's appearances in the first two presidential debates against Democratic rival Barack Obama revealed the Arizonan attempting to sell himself as an experienced candidate ready for the presidency in the way his younger rival was not, declaring that he would "look Vladimir Putin" in the eye when meeting Russia's president.

An October 13 Associated Press article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Liz Sidoti is headlined:

GOP FRETS ABOUT McCAIN'S STRATEGY

Liz Sidoti states:

"McCain has to make the case that he's different than Bush and better than Obama on the economy," said former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

The current campaign fandango duo of John McCain and Sarah Palin increasingly resembles two spinning tops moving around and around without deviation or alteration, ultimately frustrated when nothing happens.

What the Republicans of the Steve Schmidt variety, the protégé of Karl Rove, do not recognize is that the only message they have had in years, that of attack and more attack while avoiding the real issues confronting Americans, is not working with the people they need to forge a majority.

While some mainstream media analysts shake their heads and comment about a strategy based on futility that is failing to show results, a focus on basic human psychology indicates why the same attacks are repeatedly used, even after their own Republican internal polling almost assuredly reveals that the efforts have been fruitless.

One of the hardest things to do is to teach a dog new tricks, and this is probably doubly so relating to attack dogs.  

With all the recent talk about a different John McCain and all the mud being hurled in the presidential campaign, someone unfamiliar with the history of the Republican Party in the post-World War Two years might think that something new is occurring.  Even a cursory look at the record reveals a familiar story.

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman established the New Deal and Fair Deal respectively along with confronting the Nazi and Fascist menaces in winning World War Two, a Republican Party hungry for victory as the fifties beckoned used the Cold War against the Soviet Union to advance their presidential aims.

The era of McCarthyism-Nixonism was launched.  While grand smears were launched questioning the patriotism of loyal Americans and targeting those who opposed them, a party that had been out of power for twenty years achieved the presidency under World War Two military hero General Dwight David Eisenhower.  

As perceptive journalists said at the time, the apolitical Eisenhower took the "high road" and his aggressive vice presidential running mate Richard Nixon traversed the "low road."

In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Letters to the Editors October 10, Rick Kalamar of Shoreline, Washington lashed out with logic and wit concerning John McCain's friendly image that he displays part of the time on his bumpy campaign trail:

"John McCain, don't patronize me by calling me your friend.  I am not your friend!

"The 80 plus lobbyists in your campaign, including many who work for the financial and insurance industries that are responsible for the meltdown of the economy, are your friends.  Your buddy, George W. Bush, who you voted with 90 percent of the time is your friend.

"The war profiteers that are cashing in on the Iraq War who are the only real beneficiaries of your tax cuts are certainly your friends."

McCain must likewise never allow himself to get involved with any business partners as untrustworthy as the Keating Five, an enterprise in which he was strongly involved as the senator representing Arizona constituent Charles Keating, the fraudulent operator leading the enterprise.

When Sarah Palin, someone so clueless that she was unable to supply the name of one newspaper she read, quoted Reagan in her debate appearance, what she didn't tell the nation's viewers who were tuned in was the context in which Reagan's comment was made.

The comment expressed Reagan's fear that we would, if we did not wake up as a nation,  have to explain to our children and grandchildren how America`s freedoms were lost.  Palin did not explain that the comment was made in a speech Reagan delivered expressing the loss of freedom America would sustain if Medicare became a reality.

Reagan also delivered numerous speeches and cut a record that became a favorite in right wing circles about the dangers of Social Security.  In the manner of then right wing hero Barry Goldwater believed that at the very least Social Security should be made voluntary.

The October 10 Letters to the Editors from the New York Times had some concerned responses to the way the current presidential campaign is being conducted.

William E. Leuchtenburg of Chapel Hill, North Carolina is emeritus professor of history at the University of North Carolina and past president of the American Historical Association:

Here is what Professor Leuchtenburg had to say:

"One of the most luminous moments -- the `Declaration of Conscience' -- came during the McCarthy era, when Margaret Chase Smith joined with six of her Republican colleagues in the United States Senate to denounce fellow Republicans for resorting to `the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance.'

One of the most strategically useful tools the Obama-Biden campaign has going for it is the seemingly endlessly self-destructive strategic propensities of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

A long campaign that has entered its final month commenced with John McCain sealing a Republican nomination for president by appealing to the Bush base while seeking to run away from the Midas touch in reverse of the Texan and cohort Dick Cheney.  

That campaign now stands with McCain continuing to appeal to that rigidly doctrinaire base.  

Rallies featuring McCain and his vice-presidential choice, who is revered by the gun toting evangelical Christian right, and that he proudly designated as a "barracuda", have focused ever more narrowly on a hard core fringe that has formed the most outspoken and noisy element that has held increasing sway within Republican ranks beginning with the Goldwater revolution of the sixties.

In the Letters to the Editors of the New York Times October 3 following the Obama-McCain Nashville debate, quite a few responses showed disdain for McCain:

Alex Ulne from Tallahassee, Florida wrote:

"I saw on Tuesday night one candidate showing class and poise and knowledge of the issues, and one showing disdain and contempt for the candidate showing class and poise.

"I feel sad.  I really do.  I used to like and admire John McCain."

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Political debates are an excersise of vapid talking points, quips and body language. Substance is irrelevant. Candidates are programmed to hold the attention span of people that watch American Idol and read tabloids while sitting on the toilet. Yet even these over scripted, dumbed down, brain massaged events have revealing moments.

Yesterday, like most political bloggers, I posted my analysis of the Biden-Palin debate and referenced Palin's most memorable sound-bite:

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Change is passé. Barack Obama squeezed all the juice out of the change orange since announcing his candidacy in February 2007. Personally, I never thought much of the "change you can believe in" slogan but there is no denying Obama went far with it.

However, Sarah Palin's selection as McCain's running mate has convinced the public change is coming no matter who wins. Even worse, the very same corporate media that complained Obama only offered "words" compared to Hillary Clinton's policy specifics during the primary season now argue that McCain's lack of specifics does not diminish his stature as a maverick. Is that fair? Of course not! But there is no sense whining about it. These are the cards we've been dealt.

So how do we change the narrative? The solution is to present the voting public with a stark choice: progress or calamity. Change vs. more of the same is stale and no longer resonates.

John Sidney McCain III made his first national "executive" decision a few weeks ago. He chose a person who was singularly unqualified to hold even city wide office to be his (and, unfortunately, our) Vice President.

I think that single decision shows us who John Sidney III really is, reveals him more clearly than anything I have seen in this or his many previous failed campaigns.

His choice, as far as I have been able to determine, may have been partially forced upon him by the darker forces of neo-conservative Republican politics. The Roves and the Cheney's intend to rule from Mordor long after their official tenures are over in Washington. They need their Bushes, their McCains and Palins.

Forced though the choice may have been, McCain made it with a degree of public glee, of arrogance and cynicism that I have never personally witnessed in presidential politics in my tired old life.