o LAST LAUGH FILE: when asked for his take on Corsi's book, Obama Nation, McSame replied, "well, my friend, when you run for president, yuh gotta have a sense of humor!"  Then McSame drives the point home with his selection of a running mate!

Elephant_GOP_300Xo  BUT SERIOUSLY, MY FRIENDS: do we need any more evidence of the demise of the GOP?

o was Sarah really McSame's choice or was she forced on him by his campaign PooBahs who couldn't sell Pro-Choicers Lieberman or Ridge?  Sheez, either way, how can we take them seriously - or believe that they have the best interest of the nation at heart?

o who vetted Sarah?  One McSame staffer told the NYT that the FBI did - the FBI responded that they don't vet political candidates because it's illegal!  A reporter who travelled to Alaska to visit the Anchorage Daily News archives (the paper doen't have an on-line archive) was told he was the first to request material on the Governor!  Hell, even Republican legislators in Alaska conducted a telephone poll among themselves as well as other political, business and community leaders and concluded no one from McSame's campaign had contacted any of them about Sarah!

o so Sarah - GOP marketing ploy or Defender of Republican principles?  The finger-pointing is well underway! 

o  Sarah, the Wasilla mayor who never turned down an earmark - in fact, she took in about $3800 per capita - before she was nearly recalled, running as second fiddless to Mr McI'll-Kill-All-Those-Earmarks-Forever?

o Sarah, the Abstinence Advocate who opposes sex education in public schools with a growing family as a testimony of her beliefs?  Have Alaska Republicans ever heard of ZPG?

o Sarah, that working-mother, Family Values advocate who left her 3 day old Down Syndrome infant to resume her fulltime gubernatorial duties?  

o Sarah, the pregnant Family Values globetrotter, more interested in frequent flyer miles than her unborn's welfare?  And what about all those questions about why her pregnancy didn't show?  And those questions about whether or not that infant is hers?  Hey, why don't McSame's or Sarah's handlers just release the birth certificate?

o Sarah, the NRA booster, who'll march her prospective son-in-law down the aisle with a shotgun?  And what are the statutory rape laws in Alaska?

o Sarah, nominated to attract all those disaffected women to the GOP ticket, who's inadvertently become a parental beanbag by pitting Hardcore Republican Anti-Abortion Mommies against Liberal Mommies For Quality Childhoods?   

o Sarah, the Law an' Order Reformer-Governor, how come she'd  lawyer up on that embarrassing abuse of power charge after all her earlier muscle-flexing - "Nothin' to see here - bring'em on!"  Oh yeah, her sister's divorce, her smarmy former brother-in-law, I forgot - it's more Family Values!

o Sarah, the annointed foreign policy expert - Cindy McSame observed that she's governor of the state closest to Russia?  The devout Pentacostal who told her church last June that our troops in Iraq are "on a mission from God"? 

o Sarah, the GOP reformer, whose endorsement by indicted Senator Ted Stevens was just scrubbed from her website?  Thanks to TPM, you maystill see it at: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palin_ad_starring_ted_stevens.php 

o Sarah, former member of Stevens' Alaska 527?  The one who was for the bridge to nowhere before she against it?   

o  Sarah, the All-American Beauty, Miss Congeniality?  The hockey mom?  

As one wag observed, this may be the end of the GOP: 

In the best tradition of circular firing squads, Republicans are sniping at one another for the debacle. The fundamentalists blame the neo cons; the country clubbers deride the evangelicals; the corporate core scorns the supply-siders. And each of them is justified, for every strand of the Republican party contributed to conservative misrule. The neo-cons led us into the debacle that is Iraq, while shredding the Constitution. The evangelicals shocked America with the Schaivo grandstanding, and the efforts to enforce morality through radical right judges. The supply-siders really did practice "voodoo economics." And the corporate cronies descended into corruption and plunder shocking even by Washington standards.

But before the meltdown, there's the the hoopla of the Republican National Convention to be tolerated even though insiders are already making book on how soon Sarah'll resign (to be with her family, natch).  Her Intrade.com resignation stock is already up to 13!  Check it out: 

http://www.intrade.com/

Long live Jerry Reed - when you're hot, you're HOT!  RIP!