Off The Snowmobile Reservation

When you have CNN reporting as its front page story that your own campaign staff has come forward to say that your own running mate has deliberately sabotaged your campaign not ten days before the election, you've lost.

With 10 days to go until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue." A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off message several times, and they privately wonder if the incidents were deliberate. They cited that she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source tells CNN she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

They're done, ladies and gentlemen. It's over. The GOP base will be so demoralized by this that the Obama landslide is all but certain. Palin and her supporters are already angling for 2010 and 2012. The GOP is about to split down the middle, with moderate Republicans (Obamacans? Barackerfeller Republicans?) jumping ship and the diehard Palinites staying on, screaming at their own impotence.

The Schism is here. Politico.com has more.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.

"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.

Wallace declined to engage publicly in the finger-pointing that has consumed the campaign in the final weeks.

"I am in awe of [Palin's] strength under constant fire by the media," she said in an e-mail. "If someone wants to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most graceful thing to do is to lie there."

This public, unprofessional, and complete disintegration of coherence 10 days before the election is a sign of just how hopelessly split the entire GOP is over this. There are those who will blame Sarah Palin for the disastrous loss of the ticket, and those who will blame John McSame for the loss.

But they will lose. There is no way this public bloodletting will do anything but completely demoralize GOP voters to the point where the Republican Party may not survive as we know it. from the ashes, who knows what will arise.

It will not be the modern GOP. Whether it's a moderate party or a radical fringe movement, this complete crackup is liable to give the Democrats control of the country for a very, very long time.

Liberalgeddon!

McSame's almost out of time. With ten days to go, he's now making the argument that only he can save America from LIBERALGEDDON.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Saturday raised the prospect of a complete Democratic takeover of Washington as a reason to elect him over Democrat Barack Obama in 10 days.

McCain, struggling to defend New Mexico and other Western states that typically vote Republican from falling for Obama on November 4, used the argument to try to change a gloomy election picture.

Obama holds a commanding lead in national opinion polls and leading in several key battleground states that McCain needs to win. In a text of remarks he was to deliver later in Reno, Nevada, Obama hammers McCain as little different than President George W. Bush

At an Albuquerque rally, McCain accused the Illinois senator of seeking to raise taxes on most Americans, particularly small businesses responsible for much of the hiring during a severe economic downturn in which hundreds of thousands of jobs have been shed.

Obama says his plan to tax Americans making more than $250,000 would allow a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans.

McCain said having Democrats in control of the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the Senate under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, would give Democrats unfettered power.

Riding Americans' desire for a change from the Bush administration, Democrats appear poised to make major gains in the House and Senate.

"Senator Obama's tax increase would put even more people out of work," McCain said. "We've seen this before in other countries. It doesn't work. The answer to a strong economy is not higher taxes."

"But that is exactly what's going to happen if the Democrats have total control of Washington. We can't let that happen. Are you ready for Obama, Pelosi and Reid?" the Arizona senator said.

The answer would appear to be an overwhelming yes, Senator.

America is indeed more than ready for a realignment election that repudiates the GOP totally and completely, and that election is a mere 10 days away.

Ashley Todd's Aftermath

More details have now come to light about the disturbing and disgusting hoax Ashley Todd perpetrated upon America on Thursday and Friday.

Most disturbing are new facts that the McSame campaign did indeed push this story on the media in an effort to harm Obama.

A spokesman for the McCain campaign gave reporters an inflammatory version of Thursday's hoax story about a McCain volunteer being attacked by a man who carved a "B" into her face, Pittsburgh's KDKA reported.

Long before any facts about the Ashley Todd case had been established, McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director told reporters the alleged attacker had told the woman, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

The Drudge Report featured a teased story about the incident before any details about it were released. That caused KDKA reporters to contact the spokesman, confirmed as Peter Feldman.

Feldman's presumptuous claims are "significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time," an election blog at Talking Points Memo reported.

The story could deal a sharp blow to the McCain campaign, which might be seen as having pushed an incendiary story that had no basis in fact and that nearly blew up into a "national incident," said Pittsburgh Police Assistant Chief Maurita Bryant, reported KWTX News.

Obama's campaign has already privately accused the McCain camp of promoting a racially-charged version of the story.

Let's honestly talk about what this means. Despite Pittsburgh cops (and any rational, intelligent human being's reasonable assumption for that matter) believing that the reversely drawn B on her cheek was an obvious sign of a self-inflicted wound and a hoax, and having strong reason to doubt her story, the McSame camp attributed one of Ashley Todd's completely fabricated quotes to the media in an effort to score damage against Barack Obama and try to scare the crap out of (or seriously anger) white people across America.

Let's think about what might have happened if Ashley Todd hadn't confessed until, say, after Election Day, and she had been a slightly more intelligent liar. You would have had a nationalized incident that would have racially divided this country 11 days before the election. You would have massive manhunt in western PA, northern WV, eastern Ohio. It would be the top story in the news: White female McSame supporter attacked by black male Obama supporter! There would SURELY be reprisals against black folk in the area.

We'd stop talking about the issues, of course. We'd be talking about race. This would be the game changer McSame would have needed in PA and OH to win those states, and we'd have Ashley's face on McSame ads across the country. This election would no longer be about the economy, or Iraq, or any of the issues.

It would be an election solely about race. You don't think it would happen? McSame would make it happen. Joe the Plumber would give way to Ashley the Campaign Worker, I guarantee it. Obama's poll numbers would drop like a stone, it would be Obama's Willie Horton moment writ large, and there's a fair chance that it would have cost Obama the election.

But maybe that was the goddamn point. Maybe this was an effort to cost Obama Pennsylvania and Ohio, possibly North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida too. The McSame campaign's Pennsylvania folks were more than eager to pin this all on the phantom black man.

In a real sense, America got lucky. It got lucky because there were so many holes in Ashley Todd's story she had no choice but to recant her story after only 48 hours. If she had been craftier, it's possible that right now we'd be watching the end of Barack Obama's presidential run, and watch a wave of righteous indignation based on a total lie sweep McSame into office, in a worst case scenario.

Here's the most chilling part.

This time we got lucky.

There will be other times. You can count on that. I've given McSame the benefit of the doubt because he has served his country. He did suffer for serving his country. He did survive multiple bouts with cancer. But the sick, disgusting story of Ashley Todd, and what it could have meant to this country, what it could have done to throw race relations in this country back fifty, a hundred years, this is the direct result of the honorless, race-baiting, lowest common denominator, win at all costs strategy that has come from the top of the McSame/Palin campaign. It has come from the top of the GOP.

This is what the Republican Party has been reduced to now, a cariacture of sleaze, corruption, and pure hatred. My nightmares feature folks who look like me, getting lynched, in America, in 2008, because of Ashley Todd. It very well could have been the case. We came razor close to an all-out race war in this country.

It's a race war that was ignited by John Sidney McSame III in order to win at any cost. It almost caught fire and obliterated the country. That's what this man and his running mate have descended into in the last month of the campaign...a campaign so vile and manipulative it convinced one of his supporters to try to injure herself and pass herself off as a martyr in order to destroy Barack Obama, race relations, and African-Americans in this country.

Repugnant, hideous, vile, angry, and hateful doesn't begin to describe it. But it is all laid at the feet of this man and the party he represents, and honor he sacrificed to try to win the Presidency.

America was saved this time because Ashley Todd is a terrible liar. Think about that. Think about how the country got to that point...and who took it there.

Then work to make sure we never get to this point again.

Ashley Todd's America...John McSame's America...is not my America. My America is a much, much better place.

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