How Badly Will McCain's Collapse Hurt Down Ballot Republicans?

It isn't even clear if it'll be a landslide or not and Republicans are already picking over the bones trying to figure out who to blame. There are still dozens of congressional seats hanging in the balance and the GOP is still looking like they have a chance-- albeit a slight chance-- to save seats for far right extremists like Vern Buchanan (FL-13), Brian Bilbray (CA-50), Sam Graves (R-MO), Thelma Drake (VA-02), John Culberson (TX-07)... maybe even Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21) and Dean Heller (NV-02). And then there's the anticipation of the one sure victory they know they will have when right-wing extremist Tom Rooney beats moderate Republican Tom Mahoney (FL-16) and the GOP has something to celebrate. But instead of savoring the end of Tim Mahoney-- something that should bring both Democrats and Republicans together on-- they're gnashing their teeth over that Governor of Alaska's sinking poll ratings and the ugly tensions over her inside the campaign. The lobbyists who run the Double Talk Express seem to have decided that she will be the star of the post mortem: "Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image-- even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline. "

A majority of likely voters in a new Washington Post-ABC News national poll now have unfavorable views of the Alaska governor, most still doubt her presidential qualifications and there is an even split on whether she "gets it," a perception that had been a key component of her initial appeal.

Palin's addition to the GOP ticket initially helped McCain narrow the gap with Obama on the question of which presidential hopeful "better understands the problems of people like you," but at 18 percentage points, the Democrat's margin on that question is now as big as it has been all fall. Nor has Palin attracted female voters to McCain, as his campaign had hoped.

Bill Kristol rarely gets anything right-- and never on any of the big stuff-- but in today's neo-fascist propaganda sheet, the Weekly Standard, he hits the nail on the head: McCain's going to lose. What he doesn't say is that it was the fact that his always bad judgment was exposed to the American people through the cynical Palin pick and that that was the decisive blow against his candidacy. The only lines worth reading in this week's Weekly Standard:

It's always darkest before it goes totally black... Well, with 10 days to go before the election, it's getting pretty dark out there.

Kristol, neo-Con loon 'til the end and beyond denounces the Republicans who have been abandoning McCain's sinking ship as rats. He may be right but one of the worst of the rats, Kenneth Adelman, defends himself today at, of all places, HuffPo:

McCain's tempera- ment -- leading him to bizarre behavior during the week the economic crisis broke-- and his judgment-- leading him to Wasilla -- depressed me into thinking that "our guy" would be a(nother) lousy conservative president. Been there, done that.

One of the hateful Republican extremists on the fringes of the far right, who basically admits what most right-wing loons believe-- that he would rather see America on its knees, its working families starving and desperate, than see Obama succeed as president-- ripped into Adelman on a Republican hate site:

...it is ironic that Ken Adelman-- the man who assured us Iraq would be a "cakewalk"-- would criticize Bush's competency. Second, if Adelman values conservative philosophy above all else, shouldn't he consider a "competent" liberal be the worst possible combination?  After all, an incompetent liberal might not be able to pass liberal legislation-- but a competent liberal would use his intellect and ability to pass tax hikes, create more departments, nationalize more industries, etc.

So while McCain desperately tries to win solid red states like Indiana, Ohio and Montana, where he's behind, and even Arizona, where observers say McCain's own state would slip away if Obama would schedule just one rally in Phoenix, the Obama campaign has its eyes on areas where Democrats haven't tread in far too long. He is the culmination of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy.

By every metric, Barack Obama's presidential campaign appears headed for the upper deck. Polls (both national and state-by-state), organization, money, and momentum are all running strongly in Obama's favor. At this point, one wonders whether Obama's winning margin could be greater than Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's 5.6-point win over President George H.W. Bush in 1992, more than Bush's 7.7-point win over Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988, or more than Clinton's 8.5-point win over Sen. Bob Dole in 1996. Even higher on the landslide roster is California Gov. Ronald Reagan's 9.7-point victory over President Carter in 1980 and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's 10.9-point win over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

For many professional politicians on the right the only question worth talking about between now and election night is how badly McCain's toxic coattails will hurt the Republican Party and how many rightists' careers will be destroyed. The GOP has completely written off incumbents like Don Young (AK), Tom Feeney (FL), Randy Kuhl (NY), Tim Walberg (MI) as well as "up-and-comers" like Darren White (NM), Leonard Lance (NJ), and Tom McClintock (CA). And they now view races to retain the seats of Robin Hayes (NC), Ric Keller (FL), Marilyn Musgrave (CO), Joe Knollenberg (MI), Chris Shays (CT), Mark Kirk (IL), Jon Porter (NV), Dave Reichert (WA), Steve Chabot (OH), and Michele Bachmann (MN) as a waste of time and resources. Instead the battleground has moved to saving incumbents once thought untouchable-- like Dana Rohrabacher (CA), John Shadegg (AZ), Virgil Goode (VA), Scott Garrett (NJ), Michael McCaul (TX), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), Bill Sali (ID), Frank Wolf (VA), and Lee Terry (NE).

On the Senate side, they've written off New Mexico, Virginia, Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, and North Carolina entirely and are hoping for miracles to save their incumbents in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oregon. Their last stand against a filibuster-proof Senate is taking place in Kentucky, Georgia, Maine, Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska.

Back to McCain for a second: it looks like the new battleground state is Georgia, where Obama has just pulled ahead. Bob Barr, a former conservative Republican Georgia congressman says it isn't so much that Obama is winning; it's just that McCain is losing.

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