Someone left me a ranting paranoid message on my answering machine suggesting that the right wing pundit tantrum against McCain (I got to experience some of it first hand since my rental car was tuned to Rush's show. He is ranting and raving about McCain and talking about how conservatives want to destroy liberals because they are the enemy, not reach across the aisle to them) is actually a ruse wherein they are trying to trick the average voter into thinking "If the far right is against McCain, he must be a moderate".

It's a theory that i've thought about too. There's also the alternate theory (quoting Digby):

They know they are going to lose. They will blame the loss on the fact that McCain wasn't a real conservative (just like Bush.) They know when to fall back and regroup. They're already playing for the next election.

Everybody sing: Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.

While either option is possible, i think we may be giving them too much credit. Yes, the Right has a lot of money and has been very good about broadcasting their message, but they have never been subtle. Their propaganda machine is more of a hammer than a surgical knife, belting out obnoxious and clearly untrue things as loudly as possible, and they've had amazing success with it. It's not usually about saying one thing so that people believe another. The exception is when they give "advice" to Democrats, saying things like "My goodness, we'd sure love to run against Howard Dean in the general election. Yep, it's John Kerry that we really fear. Please don't throw me into the briar patch." But I've never seen this type of outrage against their own candidates before, and if you listen to Rush's regular listeners, they surely don't know it's a ruse. They are as outraged as Rush (feigns to be?) and a lot of conservatives will not be voting for McCain in this general. I think it's really possible that we're really looking at a meltdown in the Republican party.

Of course, four years of Clinton or Obama, during a recession (or worse), increased oil prices (or worse), the continued debacle of Iraq (one way or another), and possibly another terrorist attack, will work wonders to reunite the party, just in time for General Petraeus to sweep in and be the flagbearer in the 2012 election.

That's the thing with ranting paranoids, no matter what happens, they have a paranoid way to explain it.

And that message wasn't for you, it was for your answering machine.

chirp, chirp

My understanding is that the conservative branch of the Republican party has a really large number of really intelligent thinkers working at think tanks, because they have a really large bankroll with which to strategize. (I read about some of those think tanks in a book last year). I wouldn't be at all surprsied if this was actually a new strategy. They have people that really understand linguistics and psychology - it's one of the reasons they're so dangerous and effective.