The wheels are coming off.

Less than a week before election day, it is clear that the Republican party is about to implode. Several reports have indicated growing dissension in the McCain camp, especially around the choice and performance of his VP nominee. According to one source McCain has even began snubbing her on the campaign trail.

Robert Draper writes,
I’ve heard from one well-placed source that McCain has snubbed her on one long bus ride aboard the Straight Talk Express, to the embarrassment of those sitting nearby.

This sounds like the kind of working relationship you'd want to have between a President and his number two.

In any event, some of these events and others got me to thinking about the future of the Republican party, especially if they receive the beating some people are forecasting. Will it be a death blow or just a temporary lull. Speaking in the short-term, I would certainly expect the R's to bounce back to some extent during the 2010 midterm election. That just seems to be the nature of the beast, of course there are some exceptions. However, given the demographic changes that will be occur over the next few decades, the Republican party as we know it appears to be in serious trouble.
Courtesy of the US census bureau, this table shows the projected US population by race from 2000 to 2050. Given how voting typically shakes out by race, it's clear to see that the Republican base of today is going to get proportionally smaller. It would seem to me that the party is going to have to do something to appeal to a broader mix of races to have any chance of winning. And if this presidential campaign is any indicator, they are a long way from achieving that.

For future reference

Here’s my 'Republican guide for how not to fake an assault in order stir up fear of blacks and scare people into voting against Barack Obama.'

1) Don't detail your immediate pre-assault activities on Twitter or Myspace in order to make the story more believable. It will look awfully suspicious to anyone with half a brain.

2) Don't scrawl perfectly formed letters on your own face while looking into the mirror. They will look backwards to others.

3) When making said letter on your own face, you might want to make it look a bit messy for that implies some sort of struggle.

4) Black eyes typically co-occur with some swelling. Thus, if you give yourself a fake black eye, you better be prepared to punch your own eyes to make them swell.

5) If the cops show up, you need to have ice water in your veins or otherwise they'll catch on. Don't act all weird and refuse medical treatment. The cops are not as stupid as you might think. They've seen it all. You might be able to fool the people at Fox News or knuckle-dragging right wing bloggers, but us bipeds will figure it out.

6) Don't stage it in front of a place that might have security cameras unless you are going to claim you were assualted by an invisible abberation.

You're committing voter fraud, no YOU are.

"In this election, it's a choice between a candidate who won't disavow a group committing voter fraud, and a leader who won't tolerate voter fraud," Palin said.

Really? Well, today the Obama campaign called bullshit on this phony "voter fraud" issue being raised by the McCain camp. The first thing we need to realize about this issue is that there is a long history of voter suppression efforts (caging, misinformation, intimidation) on the part of the Republican Party. The reason is simple, if the Republicans can prevent certain groups of people from voting, namely the poor and minorities, they greatly improve their chances of winning elections. One way they have tried to prevent people's votes from counting has been to make spurious last-second voter fraud claims, which they are doing again. The Bush administration put immense pressure on various state U.S. attorney's to investigate these, and other, claims around the time of elections in November, presumably with the hopes of swaying the election. Some of the attorney's didn't bow to this pressure and therefore 9 of them were fired. These politically-motivated firings then led to an investigation, which then resulted in many of Bush's cronies in the DOJ being relieved of their duties including Alberto Gonzales (who couldn't remember his own fucking name during the investigations).

As the memo states, the DOJ has the responsiblity to consider the allegations of "voter fraud" being made in the context of what the Republican Party has been doing for years and in the context of the criminal firings of several U.S attorney's and the investigation that followed. Folks, I am not making this stuff up. The McCain camp is pulling out all the sleazeball tactics Bush and other Republicans have been using for years. However, this year will be different.

Ladies and Gentleman....Public Enemy Number 1!

It's become almost sad to watch John McCain shed his last bit of dignity by going after Obama's "association" with Bill Ayers. Anyone with a few minutes can find out the truth about any of this. Obama served on an anti-poverty board for a few years with Ayers during the mid-90s. Ayers donated 200 bucks to his senate campaign and while the 2 appeared at a few public events together, there is no evidence of a close relationship. This whole thing becomes deliciously absurd when learning that the activities of this board were funded by Leonore Annenberg billionaire widow of Walter Annenberg, and John McCain supporter. By the same rationale used by the McCain/Palin campaign, she was not only "palling around" with a terrorist, she was funding them. Despite this, McCain was so freakin' happy about her endorsement that he made it public. This is all just a crock of shit of course, and it is starting to piss some of McCain's party members off enough for them to speak out on this. You wonder what the long-term effect of McCain's poorly run campaign and impending landslide loss will be on the Republican party. A good old landslide will have to make them re-assess just what their party stands for. You'd think the smart one's are going to realize that the party is going to be in shambles if they don't make significant changes. Of course, the religious right will vote for them no matter what, but that group is going to do nothing but shrink in terms their share of the USA's overall demographics. 30 years from now, the party better have figured out a way to appeal to a more diverse group or else they are fucked.

Goodbye Milwaukee