Once upon a time, the Republicans got a Republican who they didn't really like very much elected to the Presidency.  When he ran for reelection, their support was tepid, at best, because, horror of horrors, he'd broken a pledge not to raise taxes rather than borrow a few hundred billion and he hadn't "finished the job" in a war he'd otherwise won pretty handily. 

They were not happy with him.  He was the only President they had, at the moment, however, so they gave him money when they had to, they planned on gritting their teeth and voting for him (if they didn't decide to vote for Perot, 'cause he seemed like a level-headed, even-keel kind of guy).  Other than that, they mostly sat on their asses the whole year, even as the economy headed south.  "Tepid," was the best you could call them in their support. 

Then they lost the election to a smarter, tougher, hungrier Democratic candidate with one of the best political minds of his generation. 

As it happened, back in those long ago days of the early 90s, my employment brought me into frequent close contact with people who were middling important in North Carolina Republican circles, the kind of people who had pix of themselves shaking Ronny and George H.W.'s hands in both formal and extremely casual settings on their vanity walls.  I was, therefore, in a position to observe their reaction to the election of William Jefferson Clinton. 

Blind, vitriolic, raging, unhinged fury.  The kind fury you usually only see in rich people who've found out that something they had forgotten they owned was stolen. 

My position at the very bottom of a harsh food chain dictated a certain, ahem, discretion in the discussion of things political, but  I remember thinking this was odd behavior on their part.  "How odd," I said to myself.  "They griped about GHWB incessantly, supported him tepidly, sent signals to all the world that they wouldn't take the trouble to pee on him if his heart was on fire if doing so would make them late for cocktails, and, yet, here they are, raving in furious surprise that he lost.  It's almost as if they think elections are just silly little meaningless rituals, mere formalities, by which Republican rule is legitimated." 

In my mind, 1992 was when the Republicans gave in and were consumed by their old love affair with anger and grievance, like recovering alcoholics succumbing to allure of a forty year old scotch.  Anger and grievance have been an important part of Republican politics, on and off, for decades.  McCarthy, and Nixon, Atwater and Halderman.  Its been there at least since FDR kicked their sorry asses out of power in the thirties, but it was always something they thought they could handle, something they could quit anytime they wanted. 

By 1994, they were clearly irretrievably addicted to it, like people who'd graduated from binge drinking to full time alcoholism, from skin-popping to mainlining, from blow to crack to meth. That addiction has dominated our politics for the last sixteen years.  Having become pervasive, it was inevitable that they would come to rely upon it. 

Anger and hate are addictive.  All strong emotions are addictive.  They can become as familiar as your skin and the prospect of living without them is as frightening, perhaps more frightening, than whatever it was that scared you into being angry and hateful in the first place. 

And that, alas, is where I am very much afraid many Republicans are right now.  They are at a point where their anger and sense of grievance have brought them, inevitably to a dead end, and that makes them angrier and more aggrieved.

Worse, their leaders are enabling them, encouraging them, validating and glorying in that anger and sense of grievance because they are, themselves, the very embodiments of anger and grievance.  (Irony no. 2,454,323 of this campaign: the National Review cover last summer that christened Michelle Obama "Ms. Grievance.") 

Possibly this is just the last spasm of the anger and fear and hatred that have driven Republican politics for the last sixteen years, like a light bulb filament that flares brightly before it burns itself out.  That would be a good thing, for them and for the country.  We do need two parties. We cannot have a democracy without two parties.  But we also cannot have a democracy without rational parties and reasoned disagreement, and that's been sorely lacking of late.  If the hatred burns itself out in favor of the at least moderately respectful squabbling that used to be the norm, that would be a worthwhile achievement for an Obama administration. 

What I'm afraid of, however, is that we could be witnessing the birth of something new--a Republican party in which the hate and the anger and grievance have burned away every last vestige of reason and they could turn into a party better suited to the streetbrawling thuggery of the Weimer Republic than to American democracy.  Certainly, there are powerful forces that would love to move the party in that direction--Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Dobbs, Giuliani, Inhofe and Palin. 

What I'm still more worried about of late, however,  is that the closer they come to a crushing defeat, the more they sound like the Likudniks in the weeks leading up to the Rabin Assassination.  Yeah, that's worrying me a lot just lately. 

What seems like an eternity ago, I became very incensed at a comparatively oblique mention of Bobby Kennedy's assassination by Hillary in a response to a question about why she didn't quit.  I looked at the anger of some of Hillary's supporters and the possibility that some particularly disturbed supporter would listen to her say that and, instead, hear "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

  
Well, as a class, the Republicans are better armed, more enthusiastic, even romantic, about the use of violence to solve political problems, and they're ticket is headed up by a guy with the emotional control of a two year old and a gun waving. rabble rousing ignoramus in heels. 

Since the Republican National Convention, McCain and Palin have been running against that favorite Republican scapegoat for all that goes wrong, the Evil Liveral Elite Media. The Evil Liberal Elite Media initially took it with good humor. This was John McCain, after all. Their John McCain. Their donut and bull session buddy, John McCain.

Then they unleashed Princess Sparkle Starburst (thanks Tena) to rouse the rabble, they realized that they were actually being nade the subject of real, honest to god hate speech. This wasn't "wink, wink its just for the rubes don't take it serious" danger. Real danger. Danger to both their profession and physical danger to them, personally.

And suddenly, the pundits are unanimously calling the second debates for Obama before they get the cover of the polls showing that he did, in fact, win. Suddenly, they aren't straining to make up phony "on the other hands" to protect themselves from attacks for being "biased." Suddenly, they're observing that McCain seems old and grumpy and erratic. Suddenly, even the Republican pundits are honestly saying McCain didn't do what he needed to do. Suddenly, CNN won't even go into the spin room. McCain's summer smears moved the dial, however temporarily, because his pals in the MSM were willing to take them up, play them over and over again, and generally give them credence and praise McCain for his political acumen.

Swiftboating worked in 2004 because the MSM bought into it as a story. If the MSM calls your swiftboating attempts "small" and "petty," as they were tonight, you are wasting your money.

In a campaign of marked by serial ironies, we have another. John McCain, self-promoter extratordinaire, a man whose entire political career is a product of adroitly playing the political press over the course of two decades, is going down the tubes because he disregarded the venerable old adage about the folly of picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel.