The Right Wing Collapse

Perhaps the most recent collapse of the right wing began to gather force in mid-September when McCain's Wall Street backers began to publicly express their resentment over his pretended populism. McCain badly needed cash from Wall Street at that point but they weren't donating quickly enough. The financial crisis was hitting in shock waves, Obama was detailing his own economic proposals nationwide, Biden was putting Wall Street at ease and McCain was out of step with his own financial backers. The hoped-for money probably arrived, but it arrived slowly and came without enthusiasm. Wall Street took a lesser-of-two-evils approach and went with McCain.

By late September or early October McCain was back in step with Wall Street, but he and Palin had by then alienated key sections of the "pro-life" right to the point that in late October militant "pro-lifers" were on the airwaves with an anti-McCain message. They are taking a political line that verges on the anarchistic: voting for McCain-Palin, the lesser of two evils when it comes to the "pro-life" agenda, is still evil so don't vote. Liberal commentators were saying last week that McCain-Palin media events were looking liking couples counselling gone horribly wrong. Michelle Bachman's rants and Palin's rumored "insurgency" within the McCain-Palin campaign hit the news at the same time. Leading Republicans have apparently fallen into pro- or anti-Palin camps behind the scenes and, sometimes, in plain sight.

Thre is a strong feeling among conservatives that McCain is not aggressively pushing--or is incapable of pushing--the McCain-Palin campaign forward. Repoublicans on the sidelines, including many on the hate radio stations, alternately criticize and plead with McCain to lead a more vicious attack on Obama. The Republican surrender in Michigan, the reactionary push-back on gay marriage and the fallout over the cost of keeping the Palin family in style is pushing Palin to look more at running in 2012and less on winning this election. Unfortunatly, Palin has been given a pass by the media on her questionable travel expenses and her recent legal problems in Alaska--issues which should have moved the Republican rank and file.

North Carolina Representative Robin Hayes said at a McCain rally, "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." He was echoing Palin's remark that "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America...pro-America areas of this great nation." Taken together or separately, these comments show that the direction of the McCain-Palin campaign pushes towards division and civil conflict.

As voting gets under way the Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to make an issue of ACORN voter registration drives. Read correctly, this Republican attack is aimed at rolling back the progress made in the 1950s and 1960s against the Jim Crow laws which disenfranchised African-Americans and the poor. These laws were, for the most part, one of the last gasps of the Confederacy. The hoped-for mass outrage against ACORN has not materialized.

Confirmed stories are surfacing around the US of attempts to derail and suppress the popular vote through intimidation, as in New Mexico, or by making voting difficult, as in Florida and Ohio. It was reported several weeks ago that the ballot in an area of New York gives Obama's name as "Osama." In all of these cited cases Republicans are overseeing the voting, the voting machines and the ballot counts.

Right-wing hate radio has for the last week or so been red-baiting Obama and despairing over the liberal-centrist political advances. A number of small business owners are calling in to blame workers for voting their class interests and not staying in the loyal McCain camp. These programs feature Bachman and Palin but hardly mention McCain. They were silent on the desperately faked attempt by a Pennsylvania McCain volunteer to say that she was attacked by an Obama supporter--the kind of dangerous event which shows a campaign is attracting the wrong kind of people and melting down simultaneously. Magnifying this craziness, one show on hate radio claimed approvingly today that either the US or Israel will attack Iran this week as a way of throwing the election and getting rid of the Iranian regime. This isn't exactly an October surprise if Michael Savage is in the bleachers cheering the attack on in advance.

The arrests last week of neo-nazis who were apparently planning to kill 88 African-Americans and Obama--the second such planned attack revealed by the government--shows that segments of the far right are picking up the signals sent by Republican leaders. As the right collapses its most irrational forces step forward, climb through the chaos created by Republican leaders and attempt to seize the day by any means necessary.