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The loser customarily makes a rousing speech at political conventions in support of the people’s selected candidate. In 2000, loser John McCain took the podium at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia to rally his party in support of the man who would become his asshole buddy for the next eight years. What he said was interesting in hindsight on so many levels.

Cynicism is suffocating the idealism of many Americans, especially among our young. And with cause, for they have lost pride in their government…

Too often, partisanship seems all consuming. Differences are defined with derision…

It is easy to forget in politics where principle ends and selfishness begins. It takes leaders of courage and character to remember the difference.

Tomorrow, our party will nominate such a leader. George W. Bush believes in the greatness of America and the justice of our cause…

He is proud of America’s stature as the world’s only superpower, and he accepts the responsibilities along with the blessings that come with that hard-earned distinction. He knows well that there is no safe alternative to American leadership. And he will not squander this unique moment in history by allowing America to retreat behind empty threats, false promises, and uncertain diplomacy.

You betcha!

McCain’s speech shows one thing clearly: he was as wrong then as he is now.

But it’s the line about defining differences with derision that really stops me. Before McCain hired a team of deriders, led by Steve Schmidt and eventually outdone by Sarah Palin, he made noises about being committed to a clean, positive campaign. Somewhere along the line he switched to the current win at any cost mode, signaling plainly how little McCain’s vaunted ideals mean to him.

What was he trying to say?

Since you’re smarter than John McCain, you probably already know that his running mate, Sarah Palin, got called on the mat by Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, for saying that parts of America love this country more than others. But in trying to refute Rep. John Murtha’s characterization of some in his Western Pennsylvania home district as racist, McCain got all tangled up.

“Sen. Obama’s supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately. And you know I couldn’t agree with them more. I couldn’t disagree with you. I couldn’t agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most god-loving, most patriotic part of America. This is a great part of the country. My friends, I could not disagree with those critics more,” McCain said.

Yes indeedy. As McCain was mangling these words, people lined up at a Johnstown, Penn. rally to hear Palin. They passed the time screaming at Obama supporters and cracking each other up with such items as a Curious George ape doll wearing an Obama bumpersticker fashioned as a hat, which its maker referred to as, “Little Hussein.” See for yourself, if you can stand it:

Hands-down, my favorite part of Letterman’s interview with John McCain was when he asked the lying bastard about pallin’ around with G. Gordon Liddy, convicted Watergate burglar and rightwing whack job. Watch McCain’s reaction, which went from, “Oh shit!” to “I’ll pretend I’m not sure,” to “I can lie my way out of this.”

McCain, as usual, is lying like a sisal bath mat. Vietnam War protester and 1997 Chicago Citizen of the Year William Ayers served his debt to society just as much as Liddy did, and he never said he “wished he’d bombed more.” The Stonecipher Report:

[Ayers] issued a memoir in 2001, released just before 9/11, which resulted in interviews with him that came out right after the tragedies.

The resulting articles from those interviews were notable – and, to many, notorious – because Ayers not only talked about regrets, but also expressed the thought that “We didn’t do enough” during the Weather days – meaning (he later explained) that he believed they could have worked harder and in different ways to oppose the war…NOT that he thought they should have done more bombings.

I think twisting the truth with those, “but it makes a better story if we tell it this way” sound bites have become so second nature to McCain that he no longer bothers to remember the facts. It’s satisfying to (occasionally) watch people like David Letterman confront him with them anyway.

Racism is alive and well in California’s heavily Republican southeastern Inland Empire region. The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports that the latest edition of the Trumpeter, the newsletter of Chaffey Community Republican Women Federated, includes a crudely produced depiction of a $10 food stamp titled “Obama Bucks.”

The artwork includes cartoon images and photos of Barack Obama’s head on a donkey’s body, a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a slice of watermelon, a rack of ribs and the Kool-Aid guy.

The offensive artwork went out to about 200 members of the Chaffey Republican women’s group, according to the Press-Enterprise:

The group’s president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club’s meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.

“It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don’t want to go into it any further,” Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn’t my attempt.”

…She said she doesn’t think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president.

“I didn’t see it the way that it’s being taken. I never connected,” she said. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.”

She said she also wasn’t trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: “Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!”

An African American member of the group told the newspaper that she cried when she saw the artwork:

“This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party,” [Sheila Raines] said. “I’m really hurt. I cried for 45 minutes.”

Another African American member, Acquanetta Warren, who also serves on the Fontana City Council, has demanded an apology:

“When I opened that up and saw it, I said, ‘Why did they do this? It doesn’t even reflect our principles and values,’ ” said Warren, who served as a Republican delegate to the national convention in September and is a regional vice chairwoman for the California Republican Party. “I know a lot of the ladies in that club and they’re fantastic. They’re volunteers. They really care — some of them go to my church.”

Mark Kirk, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County GOP chairman, described the publication of the artwork as “very damaging.”

This is bad on so many levels — and it certainly should neutralize John McCain’s fake outrage of being compared to George Wallace by Civil Rights hero, Rep. John Lewis:

Al Austin, a longtime, high-level Republican fundraiser from Tampa, today sent to his list of political contacts an e-mail containing a joke that refers to the assassination of Barack Obama…

The joke concerns a group of schoolchildren discussing the definition of “tragedy” as opposed to “great loss” or “accident.” The punch line comes when one child says that if an airplane carrying Obama and his wife, Michelle, “was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile and blown to smithereens,” the event might be a tragedy “because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”

Austin acknowledged sending the e-mail to his list of political contacts but said he forwarded it without fully reading it and didn’t know what it said. That list included at least two reporters.

Austin, a prominent real estate developer long known as one of the state’s leading Republican campaign fundraisers, has served in recent years as finance chairman for both the national and state Republican parties.

On top of everything else, the joke is not funny. More evidence, if any were needed, that conservatives are born without the sense of humor gene.

A report in the Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London suggests that John McCain and Sarah Palin are on the outs:
If McCain wins, Vice Pres. Palin will owe her position just a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency to Rove. If McCain loses, Rove will once again be the “brain” masterminding the ascendancy of the GOP’s next rising star.

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign.

McCain has become alarmed about the fury unleashed by Sarah Palin, the moose-hunting “pitbull in lipstick,” against Senator Barack Obama. Cries of “terrorist” and “kill him” have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies.

Mark Salter, McCain’s long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an “honourable defeat” rather than conduct a campaign that would be out of character — and likely to lose him the election.

Not only is McCain unhappy with the tenor of Palin’s attacks on Obama, the Times says he has prevented her from going after Obama on his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Palin is disgruntled with the leadership of the campaign, the paper says. She objected to the decision to withdraw from Michigan, and her advice to McCain to “take the gloves off” in the second debate was ignored.

A “leading Republican consultant” tells the Times that the source of friction between McCain and Palin is Palin’s ambitions:

“Sarah Palin is no fool. She sees the same thing and wants to salvage what she can. She is positioning herself for the future. Her best days could be in front of her. She wants to look as though she was the fighter, the person with the spunk who was out there taking it to the Democrats.”

Palin would prefer to be vice president, no doubt, but even if her ticket loses, she is in position to come up a winner. She will leapfrog the GOP old-boy hierarchy to become both the party’s leader during Obama’s first term and the odds-on favorite to be the GOP nominee in 2012.

The fact that a pol with such eerie similarities to George Bush — a meagerly gifted energy-state governor with a stunted intellect and a Christian nationalist ideology — has been maneuvered into position to become the nation’s next top Republican raises questions anew about Karl Rove’s role in Palin’s selection.

Can it be an accident that at the moment Bush is slouching back to Texas, Rove, the symbiot, finds a new host — an empty-headed pol who is every bit as craven, incurious and, most importantly, malleable as Bush? It makes sense on the surface: Making kings (or queens) is what kingmakers do.

Among those who believe there is truth behind the rumors in August that Role played puppet master in Palin’s selection is Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi:

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