The Debate: the last civilized moment

“Events, dear boy, events”

British Prime Harold Macmillan, when asked what is most likely to blow governments off course.

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Handicappers beware: most of what will decide this election in the coming days will happen when neither candidate is on the screen.

At this moment the Republican Party is on what Sun Tzu called "Death Ground", which is defined as when an army is cornered, outnumbered and facing certain annihilation and have nothing left to lose by fighting to the death.

There could be no better description of the Republican Party's present predicament.

Sun Tzu considered confronting a cornered enemy on Death Ground hazardous in the extreme.

Make no mistake, the Republicans could lose the election because of the war(s) and live to fight another day, they could lose the election because of a circumstantial downturn in the economy, as when Clinton defeated the militarily victorious father Bush and come back quickly, but that is not what they are facing today.

The systemic failure of the barely regulated financial structure signals the end of the "Conservative Revolution" sired by Milton Friedman out of Ayn Rand.... the exhumation and desecration of Barry Goldwater, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the death and transfiguration of Alan Greenspan and Grover Norquist and a host of other calamities.

If the Republicans lose both houses of Congress and the White House this year, they will be simply passive spectators at their own ideological, social, political and financial funeral.

No time to gloat: if, after eight years of Bush, you still have not caught on, the Republicans are armed and dangerous.

Ayers/ACORN and Reverend Wright’s supposed book or the adventures of Osama bin Laden could derail Obama just as the meltdown of the economy is in the process of destroying McCain…. and above it all hovers a dark angel, the fell spirit of Tom Bradley’s effect.

Certainly, even if McCain refuses to use these tactics personally, the "independent" conservative groups are going to go atomic, stop at nothing and call up all of America's demons from the depths of the national subconscious and so muddy the well that even a probable Obama victory will leave a nauseating, bitter, aftertaste.

The post victory climate could be so vile, that unless things go very well for President Obama very quickly, (and it's hard to imagine they will in the present world situation), we will experience an un-breathable, Balkan like political climate in the coming years as all those who have invested their entire lives and fortunes in the Conservative Revolution literally fight for their survival.

This foreboding is why I have always felt that by nominating Barack Obama, in this, their year of years, the Democrats have jumped the shark, have tragically engaged in "look ma, no hands" showboating and have unnecessarily opened a cosmic can of worms.

Al Gore: Ora pro Nobis! DS