If I've said it once this political season, I've said it a dozen times: Democrats are not the divided party--it is Republicans who are profoundly divided by contrary goals and mixed loyalties. This morning John McCain marched out onto his campaign platform and claimed credit for passing a compromise bipartisan economic rescue bill. Minutes later, House Republicans defeated McCain's bill, cutting him off at the knees and humiliating him in front of the American electorate just weeks before the election.
Even now, Virginia's Republican blogosphere doesn't seem to understand. They are crowing about this development. In fact, McCain may have just utterly lost the contest for the presidency as the result of a wound that was partly self-inflicted and, seemingly, partly the result of a decision by conservative Republicans in the House to jettison McCain.
None of this should surprise us, my friends, as Virginia's Republican blogosphere is largely peopled by the farthest right of the right. Indeed, during the Republican primaries, John McCain did not have a single advocate in Virginia's blogosphere. Nearly every other Republican candidate for the presidency had a vocal advocate or faction blogging on his behalf, but not McCain.
When you consider how little appeal McCain had for the rank and file Virginia Republicans, it should come as no surprise that McCain's own party has been unwilling to work for him, make sacrifices for him, or make the kind of compromises necessary to ensure McCain's election.
McCain inserted himself into a process where he was neither needed nor wanted. He sank the first proposed financial rescue compromise last week by stirring up the far right of the House Republican Caucus. McCain was trifling with fate, and disaster found him today when House Republicans turned their back on the man who came to Washington D.C. to lead them and make them make the deal he needed to boost his candidacy.
McCain now bears responsibility for the single largest point loss in the history of the Dow Jones. The consequences are now rippling out across the world, as stock markets open in Asia and Australia, they will crash in turn. Tomorrow, when Wall Street opens, it will stand on the brink of a worldwide economic catastrophe, courtesy of the Republican Party and its leaders.