From the Department of "You Know It's Over When.."

If you weren't already convinced that the McCain/Palin campaign is drawing dead on the river, here is GOP strategist Brad Blakeman.

Asked about Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe spending spree, Blakeman instead condemns Barack Obama for using campaign money to visit the woman who raised him on her deathbed.

Take a look....


Wow. I guess if you want more concrete evidence that this campaign really is over, take a look at this ad running in North Carolina, which implicitly concedes Obama the top of the ticket. The idea, as Marc's GChat poignantly noted this morning, is to rally conservatives behind downticket candidates in an effort to prevent a blue-curtain from falling over both Congress and the White House.



I really feel sorry for John McCain. The man is a war hero and his Senatorial career was among the most remarkable of the 20th century. He might even have been the best Presidential candidate eight years ago.

But then the GOP got to him.

In 2000, and maybe 2004, it wouldn't have made a difference, but here in 2008, the shotgun marriage of religious and fiscal conservatives Karl Rove put together is falling apart. The country is tired of the culture war and would rather that government focus on their wallets, not their Bibles.

The GOP's problem is really pretty simple: the vanguard of elite educated fiscal conservatives in the Republican party, who saw an opportunity to expand their base by incorporating the religious right, somehow allowed the inmates to take over the asylum.

That is the slowly sinking ship John McCain set sail on last winter, which perhaps struck its final iceberg in August when Sarah Palin hopped aboard with a new haul of guns 'n bibles, most likely at the insistence of party leaders, and not McCain.

The maverick conformed and his campaign crumbled. Now, as Jerry Garcia might have put it, Senator McCain is just old and in the way and his party is on the verge of collapse.

It's a sad ending to a political legend, but at least America wins in the end.