TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS….Joe Klein on the GOP’s attempt to play that old time gospel one more time:
Maybe I’m getting old, maybe it’s that I’ve seen this act so often before, maybe it’s that the people I talk to when I go out on the road really are having a harder time paying for things like health care, gasoline and college tuition, but I’m finding the Republican attempts to derail the conversation from the actual state of the country really depressing and disgraceful this year. They practice Orwellian politics of the crudest sort. They are trying to sell a big lie — that the election is about the social issues of the 1960s, or Barack Obama’s patriotism or his eloquence, or the “angry left,” when it’s really about turning toward a more moderate path after the ideological radicalism and malfeasance of the past eight years.
Hey, when he’s right, he’s right. And he’s right: it’s very depressing indeed watching John McCain immolate both himself and the country in yet another raging round of the culture wars solely because he’s decided that it’s the only way to put John McCain in the Oval Office.
But I don’t think it’s going to work. The American public isn’t going to buy it this time around, and in the end McCain will, once again, have dishonored himself and have nothing to show for it. It’s the story of his life.
