HE MEANT "WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S"... BUT YOU GET THE POINT-- McCAIN ISN'T AMONG THE QUICK

"The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of 'Weekend With Bernie,' handcuffed to a corpse."
-Larry Hunter former chief economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

A few days ago, political circles were buzzing because vulnerable Republican incumbent Gordon Smith isn't turning for help to his party's nominee, John McCain, but is instead up with ads all over Oregon TV touting his supposed closeness to McCain's rival, Democrat Barack Obama. (Obama immediately issued a statement thunderously endorsing progressive Democrat Jeff Merkley for the Oregon Senate seat his "pal" Smith holds.) Today's Washington Post reminds its readers that it wasn't all that long ago that the GOP felt the way to win was to play the racism card and tie Democratic candidates to Obama. Not only didn't that work in heavily Republican districts, it didn't work in heavily Republican districts in the Deep South. Democrats in Louisiana and Mississippi-- who every TV viewer had to be certain were Obama's candidates-- won upset victories after nearly $9 million of pointless smear was spent by the Republican Party and their extreme right allies.

With an over the top KKK faction firmly in control of the North Carolina GOP, that strategy is still being used and probably endangers two House seats (Hayes and McHenry), a Senate seat, the gubernatorial race and dozens of local races all over the state. North Carolina Democrats are begging Obama to come to the state and campaign with them.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain said the GOP will stick to that script this fall "on a district-by-district basis." But a senior Republican strategist involved in House races said that strategy is now largely dead, "except in rare instances, and I'm not sure it was a good idea in the first place."

And Gordon isn't the only Republican aware that Barack Obama is positively magic. This morning's Robert Novak column is titled The Obamacons Who Worry McCain. The typical Novak gossip is about big name Republicans who favor Obama. He talks about Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel (a probable Obama cabinet appointee, whose wife has already written contribution checks to Obama's campaign) and Larry Hunter, whose quote is at the top of this post.

And Hunter isn't the only Republican with colorful things to say about the GOP. Former Reagan economist Bruce Bartlett, who also worked for the current moron's father, George I, wrote in the New Republic expressing "disgust with a Republican Party that still does not see how badly George W. Bush has misgoverned this country"-- echoing his scathing 2006 book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.

Novak points out, that like many mainstream conservatives, Colin Powell is also disgusted, disgusted with McCain surrogates stirring divisive racial hatred, particularly against Obama's highly accomplished and much admired wife. The unfolding desperate McCain campaign is exactly what Mark McKinnon saw in the vicious playbook that caused him to announce he would quit the Double Talk Express if Obama became the Democratic nominee. And he did. Novak, the ultimate Inside the Beltway suck-up elitist, doesn't bother looking at Republican and independent voters, just at the big names. McCain has far more to worry about from millions of people who don't like the tenor of his vicious campaign than he does from a bunch of GOP insiders who can smell the rotting corpse up close.