Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

More Monday morning quarterbacking.

William Kristol: McCain sucks. He's holding me Palin back.

Fred Hiatt:  

Imagine if he waged his campaign based on respect for his opponent and the process.

Imagine if I ran my editorials that way.

Ross Douthat:

The best reason for even the most disaffected right-winger to root for a McCain victory is simple: To the extent that much of the progressive agenda is a program in search of a crisis to justify its implementation, an election that delivers a liberal candidate who's adored by the media to White House, gives him huge majorities in both houses of Congress, and presents him with a worldwide state of emergency in which to govern, has the potential to be not just another loss for conservatives, but a once-in-a-generation defeat.

Let's hope so.

Andrew Sullivan:

At some point, the McCain campaign will realize that their veep candidate is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.

Nathan Thornburgh:

But the Branchflower report still makes for good reading, if only because it convincingly answers a question nobody had even thought to ask: Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so.

Trudy Rubin:

The U.S. needs a unifier. McCain and Palin are divisive.

Josh Harkinson:

Plus, it's not even a sure thing that gay marriage sank the Dems in 2004. Kerry pollster Mark Mellman has found that anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives didn't boost voter turnout for either party. Moreover, political scientists at mit found that Bush's share of the 2004 vote increased in most battleground states, but not the three that had gay marriage bans on the ballot. Stephen Ansolabehere, one of the study's authors, concludes that the gay marriage referenda may have given Kerry a bump. "That suggests there might even be some sort of backlash against this kind of politics," he notes.

Mark Steyn: Why make fun when you can just print what they say?

The day after the most-recent debate I bumped into two Obama supporters in St Johnsbury, Vt. They said isn't it great that he's on course to win. Well, they were cute chicks, and I know an obvious pick-up line when I hear one, so I stopped to chat. God Almighty, it was like reverse Viagra: After 10 minutes of Babes For Barack, I never want to meet a female woman of the opposite sex for the rest of my life. Their basic pitch was:

"How do you solve a problem? Like, Obama!

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?"