When a political party sinks in a quicksand there are signs indicating that the ultimate act is at hand.

One familiar sign, similar to the uncle heading toward oblivion in the attic, is that of denial over what is happening, and what is obvious to others.  The McCain Ohio rally yesterday was symbolic with John McCain looking and sounding totally removed from reality as, amid more scheduling chaos, he was unaware that his intended co-star of the day was nowhere to be seen:

"Joe the Plumber, Joe, where are you, Joe?"

When Joe was nowhere to be found a startled McCain adlibbed, "You're all Joe the Plumber!"

The Republican right proceeds at a blinding speed to commit political suicide.

During an era when things so frequently went their way within the national political power structure, aided in no small part by a mainstream media that so often looked the other way or approved of atrocious electioneering and policymaking, right wing Republicans began to believe that power should be theirs, particularly the presidency, for the eternal taking.

How furious they became and how quickly already loose springs shattered from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly when Bill Clinton had the rank audacity to not only run for president, but actually win it twice.  He countered the relentless bully machine with an effective instrument of his own in 1992 called the rapid response team, which met smear attacks with carefully crafted rebuttals.

McCain, after achieving the 2008 Republican nomination by pleasing the right by proudly asserting that he had voted with George Bush "90 percent of the time" ended up cornered by his own strategy when a differently structured general election beckoned.

Note: The cartoon is the logo of the real Joe the Plumber in Amarillo. Send him some business, I'm told that he's an Obama guy. If his website takes off because of all this attention maybe he can switch from actual plumbing to an online plumbing advice column. Bob

The month began with Sarah Palin celebrating her campaign's close identification and long association with "Joe Six Pack," the mythic every man vision of America that he and they dream that they represent.

Then in last night's "debate" came "Joe the Plumber," a guy who claims that he wants to buy a business which "makes" 250k a year and he's worried about Obama's tax policies. Who's next, Joe Bananas, Joe Cool, Joe Mama?

Forgetting for the moment that I have strong suspicions that "Joe the Plumber" is a ringer. Yes, nefarious as it sounds I'm afraid that Joe may be, a not too carefully selected, and poorly rehearsed plant from the McCain camp. He was probably chosen by the same group of desperately drunken political geniuses who trotted out Sarah Palin.

During the 1968 election, one of the keystones of Dick Nixon's campaign was his "plan to end the war in Vietnam." Of course he had no real plan, or, if he did it was a poor one, evidenced by the fact that the war dragged on for seven brutal years after that sad election season.

It has been said in some quarters that the "plan" Nixon alluded to, but never spelled out, was a nutty scheme (nutty schemes seem to abound in the halls of power) to have Kissinger convince the Russians that Tricky Dick was just batshit crazy enough to use nuclear weapons if the North Vietnamese would not come to the table and end the war on his terms.

History has shown that Nixon was nuts enough. So was and is, Henry the K, but the Vietnamese, after fighting a collection of Yankees, French, Japanese and Chinese among others, for uncountable hundreds of years weren't impressed with new and improved threats, from new and unimproved enemies.

They had been hardened over the centuries to leave early for work knowing that they might have to bury their dead or rebuild a bridge or two on the way. They would not be cowed by threats of death and destruction; death and destruction was all around them, forever.

John McCain stated that a major reason for selecting Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate was because she is a "maverick" in the reformist way that he sees himself.

In her acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Palin exclaimed, "I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau when I stood up to the special interests and the lobbyists and the big oil companies and the good old boys."  She further stated that as a new governor she "shook things up, and in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people."

While midway through her first term Alaska's governor had signed an ethics reform bill, increased oil profit taxes and stunned major oil interests by awarding a gas pipeline contract to a Canadian company, there is another side of Palin that stands out -- her role as a staunch patronage advocate operating very much in the tradition of the "good old boys" style she claims to abhor.

For one thing there is that symbolic point about displaying herself as a typical "soccer mom" alongside the reality of an astounding $150,000 from a Republican National Committee hard-pressed during a tough election year to assist dollar-needy candidates for the kind of expensive Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue attire traditionally worn by the "elitists" that she scoffs at in her campaign stump speeches.

On Tuesday, the very day that Barack Obama's campaign announced he would be taking a 36-hour respite from campaigning to visit his seriously ill grandmother in Hawaii, CNN  reported that John McCain's campaign was giving up on Colorado just one day after a blitz in the state by running mate Sarah Palin.

The flurry of activity in Colorado followed by a decision to concede the state is reminiscent of what happened recently in Wisconsin.  It was in Wisconsin that a man attending the rally sizzled with rage when he asked what America could do about turning the federal government over to "socialists" in a certain reference to a prospective Obama administration.

The correlative proposition one strategically ponders following the Colorado move is the curious McCain strategy to intensify efforts in Pennsylvania, a state carried by the Democrats not only by John Kerry in 2004 but extending back all the way to the last Republican victory in the Keystone State by George Bush the Elder in 1988.

It appears that the "wing and a prayer" strategy devolves heavily on Sarah Palin and her ability to generate enthusiastic crowds in rural areas.

Joe Klein the October 27 Time Magazine accurately descried where th Republican Party is now:

"It wouldn't be fair to blame McCain for the bilious mess his party has become.  The most vehement of the Republican faithful lives in an alternate universe, fermented by decades of Rush Limbaugh's brilliant meretricious baloney and Sean Hannity's low-rent bullying.

"As Mr. McCain's audiences went out of control Hannity stoked the rage with a documentary about Obama that featured without qualification, a poisonously flaky anti-Semite who claimed to know Obama was a Muslim.

"But McCain had consistently stoked the rage as well, with nonstop negative advertising and questioning Obama's patriotism trying to make an Everest out of Obama's association -- passive at best -- with the former terrorist William Ayers."

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.  

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."

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.'